A beautiful Ayutthaya style ordination hall built by King Taksin and his men to celebrate surviving their escape from Ayutthaya during the second war with Burma. The story goes back to the harrowing escape of Taksin and his men during the last days before the fall of the old capital to the invading Burmese. The men hid under a bodi tree to confuse the enemy soldiers. Their plan worked and they promised that if they survived they would build a temple on this site. The temple still stands today and it is very well preserved and a hidden gem nestled among condo towers near the Chao Phraya river in Nonthaburi.
Wat Noi Nok - Built by King Taksin After the Fall of Ayutthaya
Wat Sala Pun, also known as Wat Sala Pun Worawihan or the Monastery of the Pavilion of Lime, is an active second class royal temple located off the city island in the northwestern area of Ayutthaya. It sits on the north bank of Khlong Mueang, the former course of the Lopburi River, near Wat Phanom Yong and Wat Phrom Niwat.
The name derives from the nearby Ban Sala Pun village, where residents once operated furnaces to produce and sell red lime, and the temple served as the religious center of that community, which also featured a local market.
The exact date of construction and the identity of its founder remain unknown, though it dates to the Ayutthaya period, likely the middle or late era. The site appears on historical maps, including Phraya Boran Rachathanin’s map of 1926.
After the fall of Ayutthaya in 1767 the temple fell into disuse and became abandoned. It was restored in the early Rattanakosin period, with major renovation recorded around 1812–1816 during the reign of King Rama II, when ...
Wat Yai Chai Mongkhon occupies a site that may reach back far earlier than the Ayutthaya kingdom itself. Historians and archaeologists point to traces of a large surrounding moat and the outline of an ancient baray, or rectangular reservoir, near the southwestern edge of the present monastery. These features are characteristic of Khmer temple planning, in which a broad outer moat symbolized the cosmic ocean encircling Mount Meru. The evidence suggests that an important religious complex, possibly Khmer or linked to the earlier Dvaravati culture of the sixth to eleventh centuries, once stood here, though no standing structures from that period remain visible today.
The monastery that visitors now see was founded in 1357 by King Ramathibodi I, known as U-Thong, the first ruler of Ayutthaya. After two royal princes, Chao Kaeo and Chao Thai, died of cholera, the king ordered their remains cremated and a sacred site established at the place of the ceremony. A stupa and preaching hall were raised, and the ...
Wat Nok, known as the Bird Monastery, stands as a restored temple ruin within the heart of Ayutthaya Historical Park, nestled on the southwestern corner of the far larger Wat Mahathat. Its proximity is so intimate that visitors often assume it forms part of the neighboring complex, yet Wat Nok possesses its own distinct architectural character and independent history.
Oriented along an east-west axis, the site preserves the foundations of a preaching hall together with renovated traces of its walls and pillars. Several headless Buddha images in the Taming Mara posture rest upon the altar area.
Nearby rises a substantial prang like chedi that echoes Khmer forms while displaying the multiple redented corners and elaborate eastern portico crowned by a secondary prang that mark the late Ayutthaya style.
This tower retains some of the finest surviving stucco in the city, including geometric patterns, partial standing Buddha figures within niches, a headless mythological figure on one corner, and ...
