Museums of modern Thai art are rare, but this private collection houses 120 major works, which are displayed on lawns, ledges, warehouse gantries and the...

Surrounding Lake Ratchada, this is the first stage in converting the Thailand Tobacco Monopoly into a park. It offers jogging, cycling (with bike hire),...

Amid Benjasiri's fountains, ponds and pavilions stand sculptures by Thai artist Misiem Yipintsoi. The park hosts festivals, and exercisers relish the skate...

This respite from market mayhem is branded a 'Learning Park', with sculptures and playgrounds. The small Rail Hall of Fame houses old locomotives and...

The famous solid gold Buddha image has been moved from a drab hall into the soaring spire of a marble mondop (artefact tower) that is so glaringly white you...

Designed by Italian sculptor Corrado Feroci (founder of Silpakorn University; p59), this memorial to the 1932 end of absolutism pointedly sits in a traffic...

Standing in City Hall square, the Giant Swing (Sao Ching Cha) was originally erected in 1784 as part of the adjacent Devasathan, a Brahmin compound of...

Thais seamlessly fuse modernity with spirit beliefs. This ability is encapsulated at the frenetic, smoky Hindu shrine to Brahma, erected in 1956 to appease...

Assembled from canal diggings, the Golden Mount (Phu Khao Thong) was intended by Rama III to be clad as a giant chedi. Proving unstable, the rubble was...

Devotees of King Chulalongkorn the Great (Rama V) gather on the anniversary of his death for rites at the six-metre (20-foot) equestrian statue he had cast...

Thais believe the guardian spirits of a Thai town reside at its foundation pillar. Bangkok's birth thus dates from the auspicious time on 22 April 1782 when...

Set behind an imposing multi-tiered entrance, the 'Dragon Flower Temple' (aka Wat Mangkorn Kamalawat) is Chinatown's first and biggest. Several sermon halls...

Named after Buddha's birthplace in Nepal, the capital's best green enclave was donated in 1925 by King Rama VI, whose statue dominates the gate opposite...

Founded in the 1860s by resident Tamils, this teeming Hindu temple is dubbed Wat Khaek ('guest temple'). Thais and Chinese, too, make offerings to Uma Devi...