Golden Mount (Wat Saket)

The Golden Mount, Phu Khao Thong in Thai, is a steep artificial hill crowned by a gilded chedi inside Wat Saket Ratchawora Mahawihan, a Buddhist temple in the Pom Prap Sattru Phai district of Bangkok, just outside the old city walls. A stairway of a few hundred steps leads to a terrace with views over old Bangkok, and it suits anyone who wants a short climb and a high view near the Rattanakosin sights.

How a collapsed chedi became a hill

The temple dates from the Ayutthaya period, when it was called Wat Sakae. After Bangkok became the capital, King Rama I restored it and named it Saket, meaning to wash the hair; tradition says he stopped here to bathe on his way back from war. King Rama III began a huge chedi in the grounds, but Bangkok's soft soil could not carry its weight and it collapsed during construction. Over the following decades the abandoned mud and brick mass grew over with plants and took the shape of a natural hill, so local people called it the mountain.

A Sri Lankan Buddha relic inside the gold chedi

Under King Rama IV work began on a small chedi on top of the hill. It was finished early in the reign of King Rama V, covered in gold, and a relic of the Buddha brought from Sri Lanka was placed inside. Concrete walls added in the 1940s stop the hill from eroding.

Red cloth and a candlelight procession each November

Every November the temple holds a festival with a candlelight procession up the hill, when the chedi is wrapped in a long red cloth on which devotees write names and prayers. A fair with stalls and games fills the grounds at the same time, linked with Loi Krathong.

Stairs past bells and gongs to the summit terrace

The stairway winds around the hill past small shrines, bells and gongs, and the terrace at the top looks over the old town. The old Fort Mahakan community nearby was once a centre of Bangkok's fireworks trade.