Wat Thepthidaram

What it is

Wat Thepthidaram Worawihan is a royal monastery on Maha Chai Road in Phra Nakhon, one of the three temples King Rama III founded during his reign. Work began in 1836 on orchard land, where it was known at first as Wat Phraya Krai Luang, and Prince Chai Ladawan, later Kromma Muen Phumintharaphakdi, directed the building. The temple was finished in 1839, and the king presided over the consecration of its ordination boundary on 22 December that year, granting it the name Wat Thepthidaram in honour of his eldest daughter, Princess Wilas, Krom Muen Apson Sudathep, who gave a large sum of her own money towards the work. Two things set the temple apart from its neighbours. Its wihan holds 52 cast figures of bhikkhuni, the ordained women of the Buddha's community, a group found in no other temple in Thailand. And the poet Sunthorn Phu passed the last years of his monkhood in a kuti in these grounds.

Checked 2026-08-25 · Source

What's inside

The wihan is the reason to come. Wat Thepthidaram states that it is the only temple in Thailand holding cast figures of bhikkhuni, the ordained female disciples, and that there are 52 of them, arranged around the principal image the hall was built to shelter. They are seated and standing rather than uniform, and the effect of a congregation of women in a Thai temple hall is one a visitor will not have seen elsewhere in Bangkok. Two smaller wihan stand within the same enclosure. The ordination hall alongside holds Phra Phuttha Thewawilas on a tiered busabok throne, flanked by two crowned Buddha images in the posture of calming the ocean, with a painting of Princess Wilas on the left of the hall and one of King Rama III on the right. The temple's ho trai, its scripture library, and its sala kan parian complete the group of buildings, though neither is generally open to visitors.

Checked 2026-08-25 · Source

How long to spend

Allow 45 minutes at Wat Thepthidaram. The grounds are compact and the walking is short, but the wihan full of bhikkhuni figures is the sort of room people stay in longer than they expect, and the four prangs standing at the corners of the ordination hall's enclosure repay a slow lap rather than a glance. Add another 20 to 30 minutes for the kuti where Sunthorn Phu lived as a monk, which is kept as a small museum. Visitors who arrive as part of a wider Rattanakosin walk can see the temple properly in half an hour and still keep the day moving, since it sits close enough to Mahakan Fort and the old city wall to be taken in on the same route.

Checked 2026-08-25

Season and crowds

Early morning is the practical answer, because Phra Nakhon has no shade to spare by the middle of the day and the halls are cooler before the sun is high. Wat Thepthidaram is a working monastery with a calendar of its own: the temple runs chanting and meditation for lay visitors on Sunday evenings from around 17:00, except on the first Sunday of the month, and its glot retreat project takes place on the first Saturday of each month in the sala kan parian. Those are the times to come if the point is to see the temple in use rather than to look at its buildings, and the times to avoid if the point is a quiet hour with the bhikkhuni figures. The sala kan parian itself is not open for general sightseeing outside those programmes.

Checked 2026-08-25 · Source

Tickets

Wat Thepthidaram publishes no admission charge on its own website, and no ticket price was recorded for this page; the temple's site, which is run by the Thepthidaram Foundation, lists visiting times but no fee for any building. What it does publish are hours. The ordination hall is open for visits from 07:30 to 18:00, and it opens for lay people to join the chanting at 08:30 in the morning and 19:00 in the evening. The wihan holding the 52 bhikkhuni figures keeps shorter hours, 07:30 to 17:00. Thai temples ordinarily rely on a donation box rather than a gate price, and giving is voluntary. If a fee is demanded of you at the gate, it is not one the temple publishes.

Checked 2026-08-25 · Source

Getting there

Wat Thepthidaram is at 70 Maha Chai Road, Samran Rat, Phra Nakhon district, Bangkok, on the eastern edge of the old royal island and close to Mahakan Fort, one of the two surviving bastions of the eighteenth century city wall. It was registered as a national ancient monument in 1977. The approach most visitors use is on foot from the Democracy Monument end of Ratchadamnoen Klang, turning down Maha Chai Road; the temple's own site names two gates, one on Maha Chai Road and one on Soi Samran Rat behind it. Drivers and tuk-tuk riders know Democracy Monument and Mahakan Fort far better than they know this temple, so give the landmark and walk the last stretch.

Checked 2026-08-25 · Source

What to watch out for

Not every building here can be entered. The ho trai, the scripture library restored with help from the Association of Siamese Architects and given a UNESCO Asia-Pacific conservation award on 27 May 2012, is not open to general visitors, and the sala kan parian opens only for the temple's own practice programmes. The wihan shuts at 17:00 while the ordination hall stays open until 18:00, so a late afternoon arrival can find the 52 figures already behind a locked door. Dress as for any royal temple: shoulders and knees covered, shoes off at the threshold of each hall, no pointing of feet towards a Buddha image, and no climbing on the platforms of the prangs. Monks live and study here, so keep voices down in the courtyards, and never photograph a person at prayer without asking first.

Checked 2026-08-25 · Source

Photography

The four prangs are the strongest subject on the site. Each stands on an octagonal base about five metres high, rising to roughly fifteen metres at the tip, and each is built in the tapering corn-cob profile particular to the early Rattanakosin period, with a figure of one of the Four Heavenly Kings at the upper chamber and a stone candle carved with a dragon coiled around it at the foot. They sit at the four corners of the ordination hall's low wall, which means one of them can always be framed against the hall itself rather than against the sky. Inside, light is low and mixed, and the bhikkhuni figures in the wihan are best taken at a slow shutter with the camera braced rather than with flash, which flattens the metal and disturbs anyone sitting. Morning light falls on the eastern faces of the prangs; late afternoon leaves them in shadow but warms the white plaster of the enclosure wall.

Checked 2026-08-25 · Source

Where it is

• 1 hour

  2 min walk · เขตพระนคร

  Jay Fai

  • High
  • Restaurant or café
• 45 min

  2 min walk · เขตพระนคร

  Wat Ratchanatdaram

  • Must see · Heritage site
  • Historic monument
• 45 min

  4 min walk · เขตป้อมปราบศัตรูพ่าย

  The Golden Mount, Wat Saket

  • Must see
  • Art and culture venue

External links

• View on Wikidata