Historic Town of Sukhothai and Associated Historic Towns
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How it came to be
Sukhothai was the capital of the first Kingdom of Siam in the 13th and 14th centuries. Three towns worked together: Sukhothai, the political centre; Si Satchanalai, the town of temples and of the ceramic export industry; and Kamphaeng Phet, the southern frontier post. A highway named after the king who built it, Thanon Phra Ruang, linked them, and they shared water works, laws, a language and an alphabet.
King Ramkhamhaeng is regarded as the founding father of the Thai nation. The Thai alphabet, still in use, was invented at Sukhothai, and its stone inscriptions, the earliest examples of Thai writing, describe the kingdom's economy, religion and government. Its brick temples, covered with carved stucco images of the Buddha, gave their name to the Sukhothai style.
The walls of Sukhothai form a rectangle about 2 km by 1.6 km, and Wat Mahathat is the largest of its temples. Later King Rama I removed 2,128 Buddha statues, and King Mongkut (Rama IV) took away a stone inscription and a stone throne. The ruins came under government protection in the 1960s and were inscribed in 1991.
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