Ayutthaya Historical Park

Ayutthaya is in Thailand, a country in Southeast Asia.

The old city stood on an island with three rivers around it.

Ayutthaya stands on an island surrounded by three rivers, which connect it to the sea. UNESCO says the place was chosen partly because it kept the city safe from warships coming in from the sea, and because it helped protect the city from seasonal floods.

Today the ruins are kept in a historical park. The World Heritage Site covers 289 hectares around the old Royal Palace.

UNESCO explains that Ayutthaya was strategically located on an island surrounded by three rivers connecting the city to the sea, above the tidal bore of the Gulf of Siam as it then was, which kept sea-going warships away; the location also helped protect it from seasonal flooding.

The World Heritage property covers 289 ha, confined to the former Royal Palace precinct and its immediate surroundings, in Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya Province. UNESCO notes that an extension to the whole of Ayutthaya Island is being prepared.

Ayutthaya has tall towers called prang.

There are also the ruins of very large monasteries.

The main architectural feature of the city was the prang, a kind of tall tower that ICOMOS says did not exist at Sukhothai, the earlier capital. The kings of Ayutthaya paid for monasteries that grew to a very large size, such as Wat Mahathat and Wat Si Sanphet.

The buildings were once decorated with crafts and wall paintings. Some paintings survive in the crypt of Wat Ratchaburana.

ICOMOS calls the prang the main architectural feature of the town, a tower form that did not exist at Sukhothai, and says the kings of Ayutthaya richly endowed monasteries that reached gigantic proportions: Wat Mahathat (14th-17th centuries) and Wat Si Sanphet (15th century), for example.

UNESCO describes the buildings as decorated with crafts and mural paintings mixing styles from Sukhothai, Angkor, Japan, China, India, Persia and Europe; surviving murals in the crypt of Wat Ratchaburana are of particular note. UNESCO lists the city for criterion (iii): excellent witness to the development of a true national Thai art.

In this photo, piles of old red bricks rise up like steps and walls.

Green grass grows between the ruins.

This photo was taken on 1 December 2018. A large ruined brick building rises in the middle, with crumbling brick walls in front. Ruined towers stand at the left and right edges, and green lawns lie between the low brick platforms.

The ruins are bare brick today, without the plaster that once covered them.

The photograph (1 December 2018, by Gary Todd) shows red-brick ruins in Ayutthaya Historical Park: a large ruined brick mass at the center, crumbling walls and a leaning column in front, terraced brick platforms with lawns at the right, a weathered rounded tower at the left edge and a ruined pointed tower at the right. No source names the monastery shown.

UNESCO says the historic city is managed as a historical park and protected by Thai law, which the Fine Arts Department enforces, with a master plan approved by the Cabinet.