Wat Lok Moli
Fourteenth-century royal temple with a bare-brick chedi holding Lanna dynasty ashes, oriented north to south.
This guide to Wat Lok Moli in Chiang Mai centers on King Ket, the twelfth ruler of the old Lanna kingdom, who commissioned the temple's brick chedi in 1527 and its assembly hall in 1545. It follows his turbulent reign: deposed and exiled by Chiang Mai's nobles in 1538, replaced by his son Chai, and then recalled to the throne after the nobles turned on Chai too. It looks at the unusual choices in the temple itself, the bare unguilded brick and the north-south orientation that breaks from nearly every other temple in the city. Stand at the chedi and consider what a king restored, but never secure, might have been thinking about.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.