---
node: spot_ayutthaya_wat_mahathat_ayutthaya
type: spot
slug: wat_mahathat_ayutthaya
destination: dest_ayutthaya
title: "Wat Mahathat"
lead: "Wat Mahathat was one of Ayutthaya's most important temples and was destroyed when the Burmese sacked the city in 1767. A sandstone Buddha head, grown into the roots of a fig tree, is the image that stands for the whole ruined capital."
published: 2026-08-12
updated: 2026-08-12
image_file: spot_ayutthaya_wat_mahathat_ayutthaya.jpg
image_source: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wat_Mahathat,_Ayutthaya_20240914.jpg"
image_author: "Suicasmo"
image_license: "CC BY-SA 4.0"
---

## Overview

The temple dates from the 1370s and held a relic of the Buddha in a central prang that has since collapsed; the ruins are brick stripped of their stucco and their images beheaded, which is what a sack looks like two and a half centuries on. Nobody knows how the head came to be in the tree — the likeliest account is that it was left where it fell and the fig grew around it. Kneeling for the photograph is required: your head must not be above the Buddha's.

## Highlights

The head is signposted and there is a queue; the attendant will tell you to crouch, and the rule is a courtesy that costs nothing. The rest of the site is quieter and better than the queue suggests — the rows of headless Buddhas along the eastern wall say more about 1767 than any panel. A bicycle is the right way to cover the historical park.