Dusit District

In the late 19th century, Bangkok was still confined to Rattanakosin Island, the historic heart of the capital, protected by its walls. King Chulalongkorn, known as Rama V, resolved to cross these limits and to lay out a vast territory north of the island. Two projects made this movement possible, and then encouraged it: the building of Dusit Palace and the laying out of Ratchadamnoen Avenue. The district that today bears the name Dusit grew out of this royal projectDevelopment project launched on the initiative of the King or a member of the Thai royal family, often intended to improve the living conditions of rural populations.. Its name, its character and its principal monuments all stem from a monarch’s decision to live outside the old city.⁴

Dusit District is today a khetThai name for the administrative districts of Bangkok, equivalent to the districts of the provinces; each khet is subdivided into khwaeng, or sub-districts., that is, one of the capital’s administrative districts. It is divided into five khwaengAn administrative subdivision of Bangkok, ranking below the district (khet), the urban equivalent of the tambon in the provinces., or sub-districts, and its administrative seat is also called Dusit. This administrative framework overlays a landscape inherited from the court. The places that define its heritage identity – palace, throne hall, plaza and temple – almost all date from the two decades either side of 1900. To read the district, then, is first of all to understand how a royal domain became a piece of the city.⁴

The name itself tells this story. Chulalongkorn first called the domain Suan Dusit, the ‘celestial garden’. The king took to living there. He went to the Grand Palace, the official residence of the kings on Rattanakosin Island, only for state and royal ceremonies. The garden then became Wang Dusit, the ‘celestial residence’. The palace was also originally known as Wang Suan Dusit, the ‘palace of the Dusit garden’.⁵

The shift from garden to palace reflects a change of status. A pleasure ground laid out on the outskirts became the monarch’s everyday home. The old palace, for its part, was gradually reserved for ceremonial. This division of roles between the old city and the new domain shapes the whole history of the district. It explains the concentration, in the north of Bangkok, of royal residences, gardens and reception venues.

The idea of a royal residence surrounded by extensive gardens on the outskirts of the capital took shape during Chulalongkorn’s journey to Europe in 1897. On his return, the king set aside land for a royal garden. Dusit Palace was built between 1897 and 1901 on a vast site north of Rattanakosin Island. It is not a single building. It is an ensemble of residences and gardens, within which the Amphorn Sathan, dated to 1906, became the main residential building.⁵

Over successive reigns, Dusit Palace became the kings’ principal residence, without ever replacing the Grand Palace as the official one. After Chulalongkorn, King Vajiravudh, King Prajadhipok, King Bhumibol Adulyadej and King Maha Vajiralongkorn each lived there in turn. The domain conceived as a retreat thus became, for more than a century, the setting of the monarchy’s daily life.⁵

The best-known building in the domain is the Vimanmek Mansion. It is a large L-shaped teak residence in a style described as ‘Victorian-ThaiArchitectural style of the late 19th and early 20th centuries combining the forms and fretwork timber ornament of Victorian architecture with Thai layouts and uses.’. Its material history is unusual. The building was constructed from the Munthatu Rattanaroj Residence, which belonged to the Phra Chuthathut Palace on the island of Ko Sichang, in Chonburi Province. That residence was dismantled and then reassembled in the Dusit garden. The dates put forward for the work range from 1897 to 1903. All of them, however, place it in the domain’s earliest years.⁸

The mansion went on to a second life. During the celebrations of Bangkok’s bicentenary, Queen Sirikit, consort of King Bhumibol, asked him to restore Vimanmek as a museum in memory of Rama V. The residence thus changed its function. Once a home of the court, it became a place of remembrance dedicated to the founder of the domain. It has been closed to the public since 21 July 2016.⁸

The domain continued to grow after the palace was completed. In 1908, returning from his second journey to Europe, Chulalongkorn extended it northwards with a private garden, Suan Sunandha. He named it in honour of his first consort, Queen Sunandha. The Suan Sunandha Palace, built within this extension, was intended for the queen, the royal consorts, and the princes and princesses.⁵

Five years later, in 1913, King Vajiravudh in turn created the Suan Chitralada garden, between Dusit Palace and Phaya Thai Palace. In some fifteen years, the north of Bangkok was thus covered with royal gardens and residences.⁵

At the heart of the domain, Chulalongkorn had a throne hall built for major royal receptions. He laid its foundation stone on 11 November 1908, for the fortieth anniversary of his first coronation. Its Thai name, Phra ThinangThai term denoting a hall or pavilion reserved for the sovereign, notably a throne hall. Anantasamakhom, translates as ‘the place of the immense assembly’. The king took it from an older throne hall, which he had demolished so as to pass its name on to the new building. He did not live to see the work completed. He died in 1910, and the hall was not finished until 1915.⁷

The Ananta Samakhom Throne Hall is a domed neoclassical reception hall. Its painted decoration is the work of Galileo Chini and Carlo Riguli, two artists in the service of Rama V. The building thus combines a European style with the function of royal reception.⁷

In front of the Ananta Samakhom Hall stretches the Royal Plaza, officially named Dusit Palace Plaza. It extends at the foot of what was once the reception hall of Dusit Palace. The equestrian statue of Chulalongkorn stands there, facing the building. Suan Amporn park adjoins the plaza. Together, the hall, the plaza, the statue and the park form the most open space in the domain. It is here that the monarchy, and later the power born of 1932, presented themselves to the crowd.⁶

The royal domain also has its place of worship. WatBuddhist monastic complex that brings together, within a single enclosure, several religious buildings, monks’ quarters and ancillary buildings; the word does not refer to a single building. Benchamabophit Dusitvanaram is a wat, that is, a Buddhist monastery. It was built in 1900 at the behest of Rama V. Its name literally means ‘temple of the fifth king near Dusit Palace’. It thus ties the monastery both to the monarch and to his new residence. The king dedicated it to his royal maternal lineage.¹¹

This link with the court can still be read within the precinct. It contains the Benchamabophit National Museum and two royal pavilions, Phra Thinang Song Phanot and Phra Thinang Song Tham. The monastery, still active and open to visitors, is regarded as a ‘living archive’ of the modern Thai era. Its buildings and objects indeed still bear the mark of the reign that shaped the district.⁹

The principal building is the ubosotConsecrated ordination hall of a wat: the ritually central building, marked out by sacred boundary stones, where monastic ordinations take place., the monastery’s ordinationCeremony by which a layperson is admitted as a novice or as a monk into the Buddhist community. hall. It is built of white Italian marble. Yet it follows a traditional Thai four-gabled plan, known as chaturamukThai architectural plan with four faces, whose gables face the four directions; the term, of Sanskrit origin, means ‘four-faced’.. In a single building, an imported material thus meets a form inherited from the country’s religious architecture. A small canal runs alongside the ubosot.¹¹

The temple houses a statue of the Buddha cast in Phitsanulok from decommissioned brass cannons. The casting ceremony began on 20 October 1901. The statue was installed in the temple on 13 December of the same year. It then underwent a so-called ‘eye-openingBuddhist ritual performed on a newly made Buddha image, preceding or accompanying its consecration and making it fit to receive veneration.’ ritual, and was consecrated. The metal of former weapons thus became that of a sacred image, at the heart of a monastery founded by the king.⁹

On 24 June 1932, the Royal Plaza and the Ananta Samakhom Hall were at the heart of the revolution of 1932, one of the major events in Thai history. The place designed for royal receptions became the setting for a change of regime. A few months later, on 10 December 1932, the country’s first permanent constitution was solemnly granted in the throne hall. The domain born of a courtly project was henceforth bound up with the nation’s constitutional history.⁶

The building then changed its use for the long term. From 1932 to 1974, Parliament sat in the Ananta Samakhom Hall. For more than forty years, the hall built to celebrate a reign anniversary hosted the debates of the people’s representatives. The name chosen by Chulalongkorn, ‘the place of the immense assembly’, took on a new meaning. The district now combined two functions: residence of the monarchy and seat of national representation.⁴

The Royal Plaza extends this political role into the open air. It has often hosted rallies organised by the government or by the palace, but also civil demonstrations. The great royal celebrations take place there too. In June 2006, as many as a million people gathered there for the Diamond Jubilee of King Bhumibol, marking sixty years of his reign.⁶

The Ananta Samakhom Hall itself is still used on occasion for major royal ceremonies. It was associated with the festivities of 2006, and later with the coronation of King Maha Vajiralongkorn in 2019.

In 1974, Parliament left the throne hall for a new building next to Dusit Zoo, where it sat until 28 February 2019. It then moved to the Sappaya-Sapasathan, the new Parliament of Thailand, built on the banks of the Chao Phraya River in the Kiak Kai area, still within Dusit District. Its name means ‘the auspicious place of assembly’ and echoes that of Ananta Samakhom, ‘the place of the immense assembly’. The project, selected through a competition won by the team of the architect Theerapol Niyom, was begun in 2013. Parliament has held its sessions there since August 2019, although parts of the building remain unfinished, and the official inauguration took place on 1 May 2021.

The Sappaya-Sapasathan houses both chambers of the Thai Parliament. The House of Representatives, elected by universal suffrage, sits in the Phra Suriyan Hall, the ‘Hall of the Sun’. The Senate sits in the Phra Chantra Hall, the ‘Hall of the Moon’. With some 424,000 m² of floor space on a site of around 300,000 m², the complex is often described as the largest parliament building in the world.

The seat of government, Government House, is also in the district, as are several ministries and Dusit Palace. Dusit thus brings together every stage of the country’s parliamentary life since 1932: the throne hall where the first Assembly sat, the building that housed it from 1974 to 2019, and the parliament inaugurated in 2021. The district born of a royal domain is today the heart of national representation.⁴

The district’s monuments do not all have the same relationship with the public. The Ananta Samakhom Hall is now closed to visitors. It opens only for major royal ceremonies. Wat Benchamabophit, by contrast, remains an active monastery where people come both to pray and to visit. Two situations therefore coexist. The temple remains a place of practice open to all, while the great buildings of the court are increasingly beyond the reach of visitors.⁹

In Bangkok, thinking on urban conservation has centred on the Rattanakosin area, which has a master plan for conservation and development. Studies of this plan reveal its tensions. Its top-down design has been contested by local communities. The Rattanakosin Charter, the reference text for this policy, recognises only the heritage of ‘high culture’, from a royal and nationalist perspective. The so-called ‘historic urban landscapeApproach to urban conservation, adopted internationally in 2011, which views the city as a layering of historical, cultural and natural strata rather than as a collection of isolated monuments.’ approach has also been applied there.³

These debates concern heritage of the same nature as that of Dusit District. Its major monuments – palace, throne hall, plaza and temple – all stem from royal commissions. Yet the district is also the site of the 1932 revolution, of parliamentary life and of civil demonstrations. Its history therefore goes beyond court culture alone, and it is in this gap that the question of how to pass it on is played out.