Sukhothai Architecture

Sukhothai architecture is the building style of the Sukhothai Kingdom, centered on the city of Sukhothai in what is now northern Thailand, which reached its architectural height in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Around 1200 a Khmer-style town had already taken shape on the site, and in the mid-thirteenth century a much larger walled and moated town was built to accommodate an influx of people, producing temples that synthesized Khmer, Sri Lankan and local influences rather than repeating pure Khmer precedent. Its signature form is the lotus-bud stupa, exemplified by the principal stupa of Wat Mahathat, built in 1345 to enshrine relics of the Buddha in a shape said to characterize Sukhothai architectural art; other Sukhothai temples combined laterite prangs in Khmer style with later brick and stucco additions, and bell-shaped stupas in a Sri Lankan-influenced Lanka style, often set within an Angkor-derived square plan centered on a relic stupa.