วัดราชประดิษฐสถิตมหาสีมารามราชวรวิหาร

Wat Ratchapradit Sathitmahasimaram Ratchaworawihan is a Buddhist temple in the Phra Nakhon district of Bangkok. King Mongkut, Rama the Fourth, founded it on ground his predecessor Nangklao had set aside as a coffee plantation. It belongs to the Dhammayuttika sect and has ranked as a first-class royal monastery since 1915. With Wat Mahathat and Wat Ratchaburana, it completes a trio of principal temples named after counterparts in the old capital, Ayutthaya.

Its main building, the Phra Viharn Luang, serves as both assembly hall and ordination hall. Soft ground near a canal threatened the site, so Mongkut sank garlic jars gathered from a public performance into the foundations. Construction began in 1864 and finished within seven months. Grey marble tiles cover the hall, and the pediment bears a golden royal crown, the emblem of the founder. Inside, you find murals painted under King Chulalongkorn showing royal festivals across the twelve months of the year. The main Buddha image replicates the Phra Phuttha Sihing, and King Mongkut's ashes rest beneath it. Facing the image, another mural shows the king observing the solar eclipse of 1868.

Behind the Phra Viharn Luang rises the Pasana Chedi, a large Sri Lankan-style stupa clad in the same grey marble. Two white prasat shrines with prang spires flank the hall on either side. The eastern one, the Ho Trai, keeps the library of sacred texts. The western one, the Ho Phra Chom, holds a life-sized statue of the king in gilded bronze. Smaller stupas around these buildings hold the relics of monks, among them Sa Pussadeva, the temple's first abbot. King Vajiravudh, Rama the Sixth, raised these stupas in the early twentieth century. Sa Pussadeva himself, appointed by the founder, later served as Supreme Patriarch under Chulalongkorn.