Ayutthaya

Ayutthaya, full name Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya, is an ancient capital and modern city in the Central Plains of Thailand, 85 km north of Bangkok.

Ayutthaya History

Ayutthaya was originally founded in 1350 and over the next few decades developed to be the capital of the Siamese Kingdom. Ayutthaya became the second capital of Siam after Sukhothai.

Ayutthaya is like an island surrounded by three rivers that act as natural barriers for defense. In addition, the rivers brought large and small boats from other important towns in the kingdom and from other nations to engage in commerce. Ayutthaya was both the  administrative and the economic center of the kingdom and was filled with a great diversity of people from different areas.

Ayutthata Travel on YouTube

By 1700 Ayutthaya had become the largest city in the world with a total of 1 million inhabitants. Ayutthaya was friendly towards foreign traders, including the Chinese, Vietnamese (Annamese), Indians, Japanese and Persians, and later the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and French, permitting them to set up villages outsi de the city walls. In the sixteenth century, it was described by foreign traders as one of the biggest and wealthiest cities in the East. The court of King Narai (1656–1688) had strong links with that of King Louis XIV of France, whose ambassadors compared the city in size and wealth to Paris.

An Ancient Ayutthaya Map was drawn by a foreign visitor in the seventeenth century seems quite realistic. It shows a neat grid of streets and canals dividing sections of the city into the royal palace areas, government buildings, royal temples and common temples, residential areas, and markets that warranted the city's nickname of "Venice of the East."

Most of the remains are temples and palaces, as those were the only buildings made of stone at that time. The great cultural value of Ayutthaya's ruins were officially recognized in 1991, when the Historic City became an UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Ayutthaya Tour Map