04Experiences

Architecture

Towers and halls

What you visit here is architecture: towers, bases and halls, not an account of ritual. Wat Arun’s central prang dates from 1851. Accounts of its height fall between 66.8 and 86 metres. Shells and porcelain cover it, some of the porcelain once used as ship’s ballast, and four smaller prangs plus six green-granite riverside pavilions complete the silhouette. At Wat Pho a reclining figure 46 metres long lies just south of the Grand Palace. Wat Phra Kaew was begun in 1783 inside the palace walls. Its halls follow Thai building practice, with additions made as later reigns worked on the compound, and a small green stone figure sits in one of them. At Sukhothai the principal stupa of Wat Mahathat takes the shape of a lotus bud, conventionally dated to about 1345, with 168 stucco figures on the base. The capital and the northern park are different materials: colour and porcelain on a river bank, bare brick on the Sukhothai plain. Look at the prang in the morning shadow, and at the lotus base when the sun is low. Midday glare swallows the detail.

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Reclining figure

1851

Wat Arun’s main prang