Wat Phra Si Sanphet

Wat Phra Si Sanphet tickets and tours: which one to book

No ticket for Wat Phra Si Sanphet alone is sold online. Entry is paid in cash at a small booth by the gate of the ruins, and the ticket is a simple paper stub that covers the compound for the day. Ayutthaya also sells a combined pass covering several of the main ruined temples in the historical park, which is good value if you plan to see Wat Mahathat, Wat Ratchaburana and one or two others on the same day; buy it at the first site you visit. Most visitors arrive in one of three ways. Independent travellers take the train or a minivan from Bangkok, about 80 km to the south, then hire a tuk-tuk by the hour or rent a bicycle near the station and ride across the river onto the old island.

The second option is a full-day tour from Bangkok, which usually combines this temple with Wat Mahathat, a reclining Buddha and sometimes Bang Pa-In Palace, and includes hotel pick-up, an English-speaking guide and lunch; entry fees are sometimes included and sometimes paid on the spot, so check before booking. The third is a tour that returns to Bangkok by boat along the Chao Phraya, which makes for a long but relaxed day. The page lists any GetYourGuide tours whose route passes the temple. For a single site of this importance a guide is worth having, because almost nothing is signposted in detail.

Visiting Wat Phra Si Sanphet: what to see and how to behave

This was the royal temple inside the grounds of the old palace, the holiest place in the capital and reserved for the king and his family, so it never had resident monks. King Ramathibodi I built his first palace here around 1350; a century later King Borommatrailokanat moved the residence north and turned the old palace ground into a sacred precinct. Two great chedis followed in 1492 to hold the ashes of his successors, and a third was added in 1529 for King Ramathibodi II. Those three bell-shaped chedis, standing in a row on a long brick platform, are the image of Ayutthaya on every postcard, and they are almost all that rose again after the Burmese sacked the city in 1767. What you see today owes much to the Fine Arts Department restoration of 1956. Walk the platform from east to west and look at the small porches on each side of the chedis, with steep stairs leading to empty relic chambers.

Around them lie the brick foundations of the royal assembly hall, which once sheltered a standing Buddha 16 m tall, cast in bronze and covered in gold leaf; the Burmese melted the gold and nothing of the statue remains. At the western end stand the remains of a cross-shaped hall added in the seventeenth century. Right next door, the large modern hall of Wihan Phra Mongkhon Bophit shelters one of the biggest bronze Buddhas in Thailand and is free to enter; take your shoes off there. In the ruins themselves, keep off the brickwork, do not pose with your head above a Buddha image and keep voices low. The site sits in the middle of the island, a short tuk-tuk ride from the railway station.

Wat Phra Si Sanphet: opening hours, ceremonies and the best time to go

The ruins open in the morning, usually around 8 am, and close in the early evening; the exact hours are posted at the gate. The best light is the first hour after opening, before the tour coaches from Bangkok arrive at about 10 am, or the last hour before closing, when the brick turns warm orange and the crowds thin. Several Ayutthaya temples are floodlit after dark, and the view of the three chedis from the road at night is worth a short detour if you stay overnight. The cool, dry months from November to February are by far the most comfortable;

from March to May the heat on the open platform is punishing by midday, and the rainy season brings afternoon downpours from June to October. In November the city celebrates Loy Krathong, and a heritage fair with light-and-sound shows is usually staged among the ruins in December. Allow an hour for this temple and the neighbouring Buddha hall, and combine it with Wat Mahathat and Wat Ratchaburana, both within a short ride.