Visit Prasat Nakhon Luang (Ayutthaya)

Prasat Nakhon Luang is located in Amphoe Nakhon Luang, about thirty kilometers from Ayutthaya city. It is remarkable for its juxtaposition of an old building in ruins and a more modern oe built above its ruins more than two centuries later. The architecture of the original monument built under the reign of King Songtham imitated Prasat Sila in Cambodia. In Khmer language the word prasat refers to both a palace and a temple, and here we are in a place that fulfilled both functions. Prasat Nakhon Luang was once the rural residence of kings when they traveled to praise the Saraburi's Buddha footprint or to go to Lopburi. The royal residence and the shrine were probably plundered by the Burmese in 1767 leaving the place in ruins. It was under the reign of King Chulalongkorn that a new building was erected on the foundations of the ruins of the ancient sanctuary. The modern building contains four large Buddha footprints carved in stone. The ruins of its ancestor have been preserved and among them, in the corridors, there is a sitting Buddha in one of the mondops which, photographed with a wide angle lens with the cross-shaped opening to the sky, is one of the 2 best-known images of this place.

The Prachan Loy Sarn (Floating Moon Pavilion) in front of Prasat Nakhon Luang houses a large circular stone found in the nearby Pa Sak River that looked like a full moon. It was brought here by the villagers. The place is not a must visit in Ayutthaya but a curiosity for those who would like to change from all Ayutthaya temples that everyone visit.