Sukhothai Historical Park

Why go

The Fine Arts Department says it began registering the monuments of old Sukhothai in B.E. 2478, with a first Royal Gazette list of 75 monuments dated 8 March 1936, fixed the boundary of the old city's monument area at about 70 square kilometres in 1975, and opened the historical park on 20 November 1988. Its English page describes the city's ramparts as about 1,300 by 1,800 metres, with more than 200 archaeological sites around them. The Department's virtual-park page divides admission into three areas: the inner historic zone, a northern zone with Wat Si Chum and Wat Phra Phai Luang, and a western zone, the Aranyik area. The Department says the park was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1991 with the Si Satchanalai and Kamphaeng Phet historical parks as property 574; this record is the park, not that designation and not the modern town of Sukhothai Thani.