The second capital of the Siamese Kingdom, the city of Ayutthaya was founded in 1350. The historic city became one of the world’s largest and most cosmopolitan urban areas and global commerce. Strategically located on an island surrounded by three rivers connecting the city to the sea, this site was chosen for its location above the tidal bore of the Gulf of Siam as it existed at that time, thus preventing attacks on the city by the sea-going warships of other nations. The location also helped to protect the city from seasonal flooding.
The city was attacked and razed by the Burmese army in 1767 who burned the city to the ground and forced the inhabitants to abandon the city. The city was never rebuilt in the same location and remains an extensive archaeological site today. At present, it is located in Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya District, Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya Province. The total area of the UNESCO World Heritage property is 289 ha.
Characterized by the remains of tall prang (reliquary towers) and Buddhist monasteries of monumental proportions, one can contemplate the city’s past size and the splendour of its architecture. Well-known from contemporary sources and maps, Ayutthaya was laid out according to a systematic and rigid city planning grid, consisting of roads, canals and moats around all the principal structures. The city’s scheme took maximum advantage of the city’s position in the midst of three rivers and had a complex technological hydraulic system for water management.
The city was ideally situated at the head of the Gulf of Siam, equidistant between India and China and well upstream to be protected from Arab and European powers who were expanding their influence in the region even as Ayutthaya was itself consolidating and extending its own power to fill the vacuum left by the fall of Angkor. As a result, Ayutthaya became a centre of economics and trade at the regional and global levels, and an important connecting point between the East and the West.
The Royal Court of Ayutthaya exchanged ambassadors far and wide, including with the French Court at Versailles and the Mughal Court in Delhi, as well as with the imperial courts of Japan and China. Foreigners served as employees of the government and also lived in the city as private individuals. Downstream from the Ayutthaya Royal Palace, there were enclaves of foreign traders and missionaries, each building in its own architectural style. Foreign influences were many in the city and can still be seen in the surviving art and the architectural ruins.
The Ayutthaya school of art showcases the ingenuity and the creativity of the Ayutthaya civilization as well as its ability to assimilate a multitude of foreign influences. The large palaces and the Buddhist monasteries constructed in the capital, for example at Wat Mahathat and Wat Phra Si Sanphet, are testimony to both the economic vitality and technological prowess of their builders, as well as to the appeal of the intellectual tradition they embodied.
All buildings were elegantly decorated with the highest quality of crafts and mural paintings, which consisted of an eclectic mix of traditional styles surviving from Sukhothai, inherited from Angkor, and borrowed from the 17th and 18th-century art styles of Japan, China, India, Persia and Europe, thereby creating a rich and unique expression of cosmopolitan culture and laying the foundation for the fusion of styles of art and architecture popular throughout the succeeding Rattanakosin Era and onward.