Wat Benchamabophit

Wat Benchamabophit is the temple everyone in Thailand has seen without necessarily knowing its name — its curved, marble-clad chapel is the image on the back of the 5-baht coin. Foreign visitors pay 50 THB to enter (20 THB for Thai nationals), open daily 08:00-18:00, in the Dusit district near the old royal palace grounds.

King Chulalongkorn (Rama V) commissioned the temple in 1899, after building Dusit Palace nearby, and asked his half-brother Prince Naris to design it. The result — a five-tiered, cruciform chapel faced almost entirely in white Carrara marble shipped from Italy — is unlike any other temple in Bangkok; the yellow Chinese-glazed roof tiles and the marble courtyard around it give it a cooler, more formal feel than the gilded riot of Wat Phra Kaew. It’s also one of the newest of Bangkok’s major royal temples, finished at the turn of the 20th century rather than centuries earlier.

Inside the ordination hall sits Phra Buddha Chinnarat, a bronze replica of the revered original enshrined at Wat Phra Si Rattana Mahathat in Phitsanulok, cast in the Sukhothai period (1238-1438). Rama V’s ashes are interred beneath the base of this replica — a detail most visitors walk straight past. Along the back balcony, 52 Buddha images stand in different postures and mudras, a collection assembled by Prince Damrong Rajanubhab from temples across Thailand and abroad specifically to give visitors a single-site survey of Buddha iconography.

Insider Tip: Come right after 08:00 opening or in the last hour before 18:00 — the white marble reflects hard midday sun and the courtyard gets uncomfortably bright and hot by late morning.

Watch out: This is an active royal temple, not a museum — shoulders and knees covered, shoes off before any interior space. Sarongs are sometimes available at the gate for anyone caught out in shorts.

The temple sits within walking distance of Wat Thewarat Kunchorn Worawiharn, a quieter riverside temple in the same Dusit area, making it easy to pair the two on foot rather than taxi between them.