Wat Arun

Standing proudly on the right bank of the Chao Phraya River, Wat Arun is one of Bangkok’s unmistakable landmarks, its five towers rising high above the water. The temple’s story is closely tied to the history of the capital. After Ayutthaya fell to the Burmese in the seventeenth century, a sanctuary was built here, but it quickly lost importance when King Rama I moved the Emerald Buddha across the river to the Grand Palace. For a time Wat Arun was neglected, but under Rama II and Rama III it was restored to its former glory. What makes it so striking today is its architecture. The central prang, eighty-two meters tall, is covered in porcelain, mosaics, and seashells that shimmer in the light, surrounded by four smaller prangs like satellites. Many of those porcelain fragments once came from the ballast of Chinese trading ships that docked in Bangkok, giving the temple a character unlike any other. Despite its name—“The Temple of Dawn,” in honor of the Indian god Aruna—Wat Arun is perhaps at its most breathtaking at sunset, when the fading light sets its colorful surfaces aglow and the river mirrors its majestic silhouette.