Famous Landmarks in Chiang Mai
Red-brick ramparts and a moat still frame temples founded within the city's first century.
Chiang Mai's oldest monuments sit inside a square kilometre and a half of walled, moated ground laid out in 1296, when the settlement became the new capital of Lan Na. Wat Chiang Man rose within a year of that founding; Wat Phra Singh followed by the mid-fourteenth century; and Wat Chedi Luang's own founding is dated anywhere from the late thirteenth to the mid-fifteenth century, depending on which record is consulted. All three are wats, walled Buddhist temple compounds, rather than palaces, forts or civic buildings, which is why the old core reads as a cluster of religious enclosures behind brick ramparts rather than a seat of visible secular power. Nothing here is dated later than the fifteenth century.
Wat Phra Singh
1345
Identified less by its outline than by what it holds: a seated Buddha figure known as Phra Buddha Sihing, kept enshrined inside the temple rather than displayed on its exterior.
Wat Phra Singh is a Buddhist temple complex in Chiang Mai founded around 1345. Its full name is recorded as Wat Phra Singh Woramahaviharn, rendered in the Royal Thai General System as Wat Phra Sing Wora Maha Wihan. The temple is the enshrinement site of the Phra Buddha Sihing, a seated Buddha image kept inside it rather than displayed outdoors, which gives the complex a devotional significance separate from its layout or architecture. It is a registered Thai historic site and remains in active use.
Photo: Stefan Fussan (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Wat Chedi Luang
1441
No description of its current structure, materials or layout is recorded; what distinguishes it in the sourced record is that its grounds combine three formerly separate temples into a single compound.
Wat Chedi Luang is a Buddhist temple in the historic centre of Chiang Mai, built in 1441. Its name is popularly translated as the temple of the grand stupa. The grounds seen today were formed by merging three separate temples that once stood on the same site, Wat Chedi Luang, Wat Ho Tham and Wat Sukmin, into a single compound. It is a registered Thai historic site and remains in active use as a place of worship.
- Its name is popularly translated as "the temple of the grand stupa."
- Its grounds were formed by merging three separate temples, Wat Chedi Luang, Wat Ho Tham and Wat Sukmin, into one compound.
Photo: Sarawut VRW (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Wat Chiang Man
1297
Located inside the old city's walled, moated square, among the same brick ramparts and water that still define that historic core, rather than standing apart from it.
Wat Chiang Man is a Buddhist temple inside the old walled and moated quarter of Chiang Mai, founded in 1297, within a year of the city itself being laid out as the new capital of Lan Na. Its position inside the original defensive square, bounded by brick ramparts and a moat, ties it directly to the city's founding rather than to any later expansion. It is a registered Thai historic site and continues to function as an active temple within that historic core.
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History
Chiang Mai was founded in 1296 as the new capital of the kingdom of Lan Na, replacing Chiang Rai, on a bend of the Ping River within reach of regional trade routes. The founders laid the new capital out as a walled, moated square roughly a mile and a half on each side, and construction of its major temples began almost at once: Wat Chiang Man within the founding year itself, Wat Phra Singh by the mid-fourteenth century, and Wat Chedi Luang at some point across the following century and a half, though exactly when is disputed between sources. The brick ramparts that still trace that original square, now reduced mostly to corner fragments and a surrounding moat, mark the boundary of the city as it existed for its first centuries, before later growth spread population and building far beyond it.