Wat Ratchanatdaram

What it is

Wat Ratchanatdaram Worawihan stands where Ratchadamnoen Klang meets Maha Chai Road in Phra Nakhon, and it is on itineraries for one building inside it: Loha Prasat, the metal-spired monastery. King Nangklao (Rama III) ordered the temple in 1846 for his granddaughter, Princess Somanass Waddhanawathy. It was not finished in his reign; construction restarted in 1960 under Rama IX, supervised by Thailand's Fine Arts Department, a Buddha relic was enshrined at the topmost spire in 1995, and the building opened to the public in 2007. Loha Prasat rises 36 metres and carries 37 metal spires, one for each of the 37 Bodhipakkhiya Dharma, the qualities that lead to enlightenment. The plan is an old Buddhist one, known from Shravasti in India and from Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka, and both of those are described as no longer existing. That is the argument for climbing this one: not that it is the prettiest temple on Ratchadamnoen, but that the form survives here and effectively nowhere else a visitor can walk into.

Checked 2026-08-25 · Source

What's inside

Loha Prasat is seven storeys arranged in three levels, and the spires are distributed by level: 24 on the bottom, 12 in the middle, one at the top. The ground floor is a labyrinth of columns rather than a hall, and the corridors above run in concentric squares around a spiral stair of 67 steps that climbs the core to the terrace and the relic beneath the single upper spire. The interest of the building is structural rather than decorative — there is no great mural cycle and no famous image here, only the repetition of the plan seen from inside it. The record on Loha Prasat is thinner than the building deserves, and the encyclopaedic account contradicts itself: it describes the Indian precedent as having held a thousand rooms under a golden spire and the Sri Lankan one as nine floors roofed in copper, calls both gone, and then calls the Bangkok building one of two remaining. Both statements are printed here because the source carries both. The temple's ordination hall and courtyard sit at ground level around it and take a few minutes.

Checked 2026-08-25 · Source

How long to spend

Allow 45 minutes. That is roughly five minutes in the courtyard, ten to fifteen on the spiral stair with stops on the intermediate levels, fifteen on the top terrace, and the descent. The figure is judgement, not an operator statement — nobody publishes a suggested visit length for this temple. Anyone climbing slowly, or waiting out a group on the narrow stair, should allow an hour. Paired with Wat Saket and the Golden Mount immediately to the east, the two together run to about two and a half hours including the walk between them.

Checked 2026-08-25

Season and crowds

The hours recorded for Wat Ratchanatdaram are 08:00 to 17:00 every day, with no closed day, but that value comes from OpenStreetMap and nothing published by the temple confirms it. There is no temple website. A dhammathai.org directory page, the ONEP heritage dossier and the Facebook page facebook.com/watratchanadda were all checked; the directory and the dossier carry no visiting hours, and the Facebook page could not be read or confirmed as the temple's own. Every source repeating 08:00 to 17:00 is a travel aggregator and was rejected. Treat the times as indicative and arrive early rather than late. The best hour is 08:00, at nominal opening: the terrace and the stair are narrow, and the Rattanakosin coach circuit reaches this temple mid-morning. The best months are November to February, Bangkok's cool dry season — the spiral stair is unventilated and the climb is punishing in the March-to-May heat.

Checked 2026-08-25 · Source

Tickets

No admission figure is recorded for Wat Ratchanatdaram, because the temple publishes none. What was checked: the dhammathai.org temple directory entry, the ONEP heritage dossier at worldheritagesite.onep.go.th, the facebook.com/watratchanadda page, and searches for an official temple domain, which returned only aggregators. Several aggregator sites quote 20 THB for foreigners with Thai nationals free, effectively a donation box at the Loha Prasat entrance, but no operator publication of that was found and the figure is therefore not recorded here as a price. Carry small notes in any case: Thai temples that ask for a contribution rarely give change and never take cards.

Checked 2026-08-25

Getting there

No car is needed and a car is a liability on Ratchadamnoen Klang, where parking is scarce and the one-way system is unhelpful. The nearest metro is MRT Sam Yot on the Blue Line, roughly a kilometre's walk north-east through the old town. The Ratchadamnoen bus corridor passes the temple directly. From the eastern side of the city the Khlong Saen Saep canal boat ends at Phanfa Lilat pier, a few minutes' walk away past the Golden Mount, which is usually faster in traffic than any road option. The temple sits on the Maha Chai junction beside Mahakan Fort, so it is easy to find on foot from Democracy Monument.

Checked 2026-08-25

What to watch out for

The stair is the real constraint. Sixty-seven steps up a tight unventilated spiral, no lift, and no alternative route to the terrace — anyone unsteady on stairs, carrying a small child, or unhappy in enclosed spaces should plan to see the building from the ground. It gets hot inside by mid-morning. Shoes come off before entering, and the usual Bangkok temple rule on covered shoulders and knees applies here as it does across the city. Because the temple publishes nothing, a closure for a royal or monastic occasion will not be announced anywhere a visitor can check, so a wasted trip is possible and the temple is best treated as one stop in a Rattanakosin walk rather than the sole objective of a taxi ride. On Ratchadamnoen, strangers who open with the news that the temple is closed today and a tuk-tuk alternative are running a well-worn routine; walk to the gate and look.

Checked 2026-08-25

Photography

The building photographs better than it is usually shown. From the terrace the spires stack into repeating diagonals, and early morning light from the east separates them from the sky before the haze builds; by midday they flatten into grey. The whole structure reads best from across Ratchadamnoen Klang near Mahakan Fort, where there is enough distance to get all 36 metres in without tipping the camera back. Inside, the column labyrinth and the corridors are dark — expect high ISO, brace against a pillar rather than carrying a tripod, which is impractical on the spiral stair, and do not fire a flash towards shrines or people at prayer. From the top terrace the Golden Mount at Wat Saket sits due east and makes the obvious second frame.

Checked 2026-08-25

Where it is

• 45 min

  2 min walk · เขตพระนคร

  Wat Thepthidaram

  • Must see · Heritage site
  • Historic monument
• 1 hour

  4 min walk · เขตพระนคร

  Jay Fai

  • High
  • Restaurant or café
• 1 hr 30 min

  4 min walk · เขตป้อมปราบศัตรูพ่าย

  King Prajadhipok Museum

  • High
  • Museum

External links

• +66 2 224 8807
• View on Wikidata