Wat Sommanat Ratchaworawihan

King Rama IV built Wat Sommanat Ratchaworawihan in 1853 as a memorial to his first queen, Somanass Waddhanawathy, who died at 17. It stands at 646 Krung Kasem Road in Bangkok’s Pom Prap Sattru Phai district, along the Khlong Phadung Krung Kasem canal. Entry is free, daily 05:00-17:00.

The story behind the temple is a personal one. Mongkut married Princess Somanass upon his coronation in 1851; she bore him a son in 1852 who died shortly after birth, and Somanass herself died two months later, still a teenager. The grieving king commissioned this temple as her memorial and named it after her. It was also the first royal temple built for the Dhammayut Nikaya — the reform Buddhist order Mongkut had founded decades earlier as a monk himself, before he took the throne. Construction finished in 1856, when Somdet Phra Wannarat, a senior Dhammayut monk, relocated here from Wat Rachathiwat with forty monks to serve as the temple’s first abbot.

The buildings mix Rattanakosin-period Thai form with imported Western details — a combination that was still unusual when it was built. The ubosot’s gables carry gilded stucco in a cotton-rose flower pattern framing stained-glass windows, with the royal monograms of Mongkut and Somanass worked into the door and window surrounds. The principal Buddha image inside, Phra Buddha Siri, was cast and brought from Wat Rachathiwat in Samsen the same year the temple was finished. Two stupas stand in the grounds: a large gilded chedi holding Buddha relics, and beside it a smaller white stupa built in the Sri Lankan (Lanka) style — a form found at only two temples anywhere in Thailand. Chinese-style bell and drum towers round out the compound.

Wat Sommanat still functions as the official crematorium of the Royal Thai Army, and its canal-side site near Government House keeps it close to the administrative heart of the city rather than the tourist-heavy temples on Rattanakosin Island across town. Wat Saket, Nang Loeng Market, and Rachadamnoen Boxing Stadium are all a short walk or ride away in the same district.

Insider Tip: The white Lanka-style stupa is easy to miss next to the larger gilded chedi — walk the full grounds rather than stopping at the ubosot, since it’s one of only two of its kind in the country.

Watch out: Don’t confuse the history here with Bangkok’s more famous Rattanakosin-island royal temples — Wat Sommanat’s founding story is specific to Queen Somanass and the Dhammayut order, not the older Chakri-dynasty temples across the river.

Dress modestly, shoulders and knees covered, and remove your shoes before entering the ubosot.