Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
passing of the Sangha Act of 1902 has established Thammayut as the second of Thailand's
Theravada denominations. Wat Samor Rai was renamed as Wat Ratchatiwat during the
fourth reign, the name meaning “temple where the king resides”. In the time of Rama
V
the
temple structure had deteriorated, and so the king directed Prince Naris to reconstruct
the Khmer-style
ubosot,
but retain the original walls because of the significance of the
building in the history of the Thammayut sect. The murals were done using the European
fresco technique and depict the story of Phra Vessandara, the Buddha's tenth reincarn-
ation. Prince Naris prepared the drafts and Carlo Rigoli, an Italian artist brought out to
Siam to paint the frescoes inside the dome of the Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall, fol-
lowed his designs to create a work that evokes the frescoes that can be found in European
monasteries, using light and form to give a realism to the scenes and images. The
sala
karnprian
, or sermon hall, situated on the other side of the access lane is constructed en-
tirely of teak and can accommodate up to one thousand people. Wat Ratchatiwat retains
something of its former rural charm, the temple being set in garden surroundings on the
bank of the river, with the graceful buildings of the temple school in the leafy grounds.
Along the riverbank in front of the temple, running northwards from the landing pier,
is a footpath that takes us over a small canal and past a carefully tended Christian grave-
yard. Following the lane around the cemetery brings us to the rear of a Romanesque
church, but before going to the front, pause and examine the small building on the right.
It is a chapel with three windows and a gabled roof, a plain structure with elements of
Thai and European styles blended, and looks as if a congregation of twenty would fill the
building entirely. This is the oldest Catholic church in Bangkok. The Church of Immacu-
late Conception was built in 1674, during the time of Louis Laneau, the first bishop of
Siam. This was the height of the Ayutthaya period, and King Narai was following a policy
of closer relationships with the European powers. Bishop Laneau was head of the Roman
Catholic mission in Indochina, and was headquartered at Ayutthaya. A large number of
Catholic priests, many of them Portuguese, were travelling to and from Ayutthaya dur-
ing this period, and a group of them founded a small community on the bank of the river,
where they built the small chapel that we see today.
At that time there were only about 600 Siamese Catholics, according to Catholic re-
cords, but there were many more of other nationalities within the country, including the
Portuguese and other Europeans, along with Vietnamese, Japanese and Chinese. This was,
of course, before the founding of the Portuguese Catholic community at Thonburi, and
so it represented a firm foothold for the lower Chao Phraya region. The Catholic priests
had reason to believe they could greatly increase their number of Siamese converts, and
