The Lotus Forest
Walking through what was once rich agricultural land, our route takes us past a royal palace and through Bangkok’s prime shopping district to a neighbourhood of small Hindu shrines, ending at the city’s first public park.
Duration: 4 hours
The Elephant Head Bridge, adorned on all four corners with elephant head pilasters, carries Phayathai Road over the Saen Saeb canal. At the foot of the bridge, and running almost to Siam Square, is a high wall pierced by a single gate. The enormous trees that shade the wall indicate a sylvan land away from the mad rush of traffic, but there is no sign at the gate as to what lies beyond.
The official name of the bridge is Saphan Chalerm Lar 56, and it was built in 1908, the name commemorating the fifty-sixth birthday of Rama V, who had built a bridge every year since 1894, out of his own funds, to mark his birthday. It is the fifteenth of the seventeen “Chalerm” bridges built during the king’s reign, the series ceasing with his death, although Rama VI followed the policy for a number of years with the Charoen series, until he ran out of places to build them. Thereafter the king donated birthday funds to hospital building. The Elephant Head Bridge has been widened in recent years and is no longer quite the whimsical structure it was, but it is nonetheless one of only three remaining Chalerm bridges: one crossing the Saen Saeb canal a little lUrther down at Ratchadamri Road, an original but plainer structure, and the third, 53, an even more modest bridge directly under the Saphan Taksin Skytrain station at Charoen Krung Road.
Saen Saeb canal was dug by order of Rama iii during a conflict between Siam and Vietnam, who were fighting over Cambodian territory. The canal, which took three years to build, starting from 1837, was cut from a point near the Mahakan Fort in Bangkok through to the Bang Pa Kong River, in Chachoengsao Province, allowing large numbers of troops and equipment to be transported by water to Cambodia. By the time Rama iv came to the throne the canal was a more tranquil waterway, with an abundance of lotus flowers growing in the waters and the mud in this area, and so the king named the new palace he directed to be built here, on the canal bank, Sra Pathum Palace, or Lotus Pond Palace. Alongside it he built a temple, Wat Pathum Wanaram. It is from the palace and temple that Pathum Wan district takes its name.
Sra Pathum Palace was built for royal recreation in what was then open fields, and today the royal estate here covers forty-three acres, although the palace and its grounds covers only seventeen of them, the remainder of the land being leased to commercial buildings, including Siam Paragon and CentralWorld. Before the recent developments the Siam InterContinental Hotel and its gardens stood on this land. The hotel had opened in 1964, being one of the first of Thailand’s new international hotels, and its gardens were vast. No one realised quite how vast until the hotel was demolished about a decade ago, and only then because the grounds could be seen from the Skytrain, itself completed only a few years previously. The Skytrain also revealed Sra Pathum Palace, until the high buildings were later erected, and until that time few people had actually seen it. Sra Pathum, however, holds a very important place in Thai history. Here lived Queen Savang Vadhana, twenty-seventh daughter of Rama IV, consort to Rama V, mother of Prince Mahidol Adulyadej, and grandmother of both King
Ananda Mahidol, Rama vm, who died at a young age in 1946, and King Bhumibol Adulyadej, Rama IX. The wedding of Prince Mahidol and Princess Srinagarindra, the Princess Mother, took place here, and this is also where they made their home. Here, too, took place the wedding of their son King Bhumibol to Queen Sirikit in 1950. Prince Mahidol had died here in 1929, after which the Princess Mother lived here as a widow until her own death in 1995. Queen Savang died here in 1955 at the age of 93. Today, Sra Pathum Palace is the residence of Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn.
Despite the solid wall of shopping malls along one half of Siam Square’s northern side, and the concrete beams of the Skytrain overhead, there is still a significant remnant of the early days here, with the pink pastel wall of Wat Pathum Wanaram, lotus blooms in panels along its length, and on top of the pillars. The temple was founded in 1857 by Rama IV, when the only way to get here was by boat along the canal, and it is designated a royal temple third class. The ashes of Prince Mahidol are buried here, along with those of the Princess Mother, and amongst the buildings is a sala constructed from the crematorium of the Princess Mother. The principal Buddha image in the ubosot was brought from Vientiane, in Laos, during the reign of Rama lll. Somehow the compound, with its bodhi tree, its white chedi and its shrine fragrant with incense smoke, manages to be peaceful and serene, and if the visitor wanders down the gravel path and past the monks’ quarters he will find himself in a miniature forest, a place for anyone who wishes to meditate, and for those studying at the Dharma centre in the grounds. The temple underwent grim publicity in 2010 when several civilians were shot and killed here during the government clashes with the Red Shirts, who had barricaded the nearby Ratchaprasong junction.
Diagonally across the Ratchaprasong junction is the Erawan Shrine, another site where violent tragedy has struck in recent years. On the morning of 21st March 2006, a Muslim man had smashed the
Hindu image at the shrine, and for his trouble had been beaten to death on the spot by two street sweepers. The dead man, his father later explained, had been mentally ill, rather than driven by any hatred of the Hindu religion or the deity Than Tao Mahaprom, who is represented at the shrine. The image in place today was installed two months after the incident, and is a far more valuable (and stronger) image, being made from an alloy of nine metals, including gold and silver, unlike the previous image, which was made of plaster covered with gold leaf.
The Erawan Shrine is one of Bangkok’s most famous attractions, a courtyard of intense colour, music, the clanging of bells and swirling incense smoke, made even more colourful by the bright blooms of the flower vendors outside on the pavement. Devotees offering prayers and hoping for wishes to be granted, or giving thanks for earlier good fortune, can hire the shrine dancers to accompany their prayers. A small sum of money is paid to the woman seated at a small wooden desk, the amount varying according to how many dancers are requested, a scale being posted on a signboard on the wall. Two xylophones and a double-headed drum provide the music. A dance usually lasts for three minutes. Spare a thought for the dancers, for they work long hours: usually every other day, with a shift that can last from 8 a. m. to 4 p. m., or 4 p. m. to 10 p. m.
The Erawan Shrine is not old, having been founded in 1956 to reverse a series of misfortunes and mishaps that had occurred since work began three years previously on building the Erawan Hotel next door. The Erawan was a government venture, the first of the international hotels built after World War II., and the aura of bad luck that surrounded the hotel prompted the consultation of one of Thailand’s leading astrologers, Luang Suwichanphaet. He explained that the time of the laying of the foundation stone had been inauspicious, and that to correct it a shrine to appease the spirit of the land would have to be built within the grounds of the hotel. An image of Than Tao Mahaprom, the four-faced deity also known as Brahma, was decided upon. A sculptor named Chit Phimkowit, who worked for the Fine Arts Department, undertook the design of the image that was unveiled on 9th November 1956. The replacement image that was installed according to very precise directions between 11 a. m. and 11.59 a. m. on 21st May 2006 is an exact replica. The original Erawan Hotel, named after Brahma’s thirty-three-headed elephant, thrived for more than thirty years before being demolished and replaced by the present Grand Hyatt Erawan.
A revered Hindu shrine in a Buddhist country is not so surprising given the relationship between the two religions, and Brahma ceremonies are very much part of significant occasions in Thailand. Hinduism travelled out of India via merchants, sailors and artisans from the Coromandel Coast and settled in parts of Southeast Asia more than a thousand years ago, rooting deeply into the Khmer empire at Angkor and on the island of Bali. Of the Hindu gods who became entrenched in Siamese culture, Vishnu became favoured by royalty, Brahma by the priestly class, and Shiva by women wishing for children. Over the centuries, Hinduism in Siam evolved in a different way to the Indian beliefs. Scholars say that the Thai beliefs are based on a more ancient form of the religion, unmodified by the bhakti doctrine that effected such changes in India, and being far more ritualistic.
Incense sticks are lit at the Erawan Shrine as an offering to the Brahma image
For reasons that no one seems to know, the junction at which the Erawan Shrine stands, nowadays increasingly referred to as Ratchaprasong Square, has evolved as a concentration of Hindu shrines. There are six of them, including the Erawan Shrine, each devoted to a different deity. Brahma is the god of kindness, mercy, sympathy and impartiality, each virtue represented in the four faces of the image. Visitors to the Erawan Shrine purchase an “offering set” from one of the stalls, which will cost about fifty baht and includes twelve incense sticks, four candles, four jasmine and marigold garlands and four pieces of gold leaf. They then walk around the shrine in a clockwise direction and offer three incense sticks, one candle, one garland and a piece of gold leaf to each face of the Brahma image. Indra, the god who takes care of humankind, the supreme ruler with his lightning bolt and thousand eyes, is represented in the jade coloured image at the front of Amarin Plaza, next door to the Erawan Shrine. Small elephant figurines and fresh marigold garlands are the offerings here. On the opposite side of the road, Vishnu, the god of mercy, is mounted on his celestial vehicle Garuda in front of the InterContinental. He was erected in 1997, in the wake of a fire that badly damaged the hotel shortly before it opened, and is there to protect local businesses and the wellbeing of all worshippers with a mighty power that deflects evil spirits from the vicinity. Offerings here are yellow items, such as marigold garlands, pieces of yellow fabric, and even Thai desserts such as tong yip and tong yod.
Next to the InterContinental stands Gaysorn Plaza, and here on a plinth outside the fourth floor stands an image of Lakshmi, the goddess of luck, wealth and fertility. She is the consort of Lord Vishnu, and her presence is believed to enhance his power. Offerings are dark pink lotus blossoms, coins and sugar cane. Ganesh, the elephant god, sits in a shrine in front of the Isetan department square at CentralWorld, on the other side of the junction. He is the son of Shiva, the lord of the gods, accidentally beheaded by his father who was then directed to decapitate the first creature he saw, to provide a replacement head. The creature happened to be an elephant. Ganesh has a mouse as his celestial vehicle, and is known for his creativity, love of the fine arts and encouragement of success. Offerings here are marigold garlands, milk, traditional desserts, sugar cane and fruit such as bananas and apples. Close to the Ganesh Shrine is the shrine of Trimurti, a combination of the qualities of three gods: Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and Shiva the Destroyer. Hence this is a very powerful shrine. Thais regard Trimurti also as being the god of love, and the belief is that he descends from heaven to this shrine at 9.30 p. m. every Tuesday and Thursday, which is why you will find young Thais praying here fervently at these times and offering the traditional nine red incense sticks, red candles and red roses.
Many years before Siam Square was laid out, the adjacent area had briefly been part of Thailand’s first airport. Aeroplanes came surprisingly quickly to Siam. The Wright brothers flew the world’s first powered aircraft in December 1903, and only seven years later, at the beginning of 1911, a Belgian pilot named Charles van den Born sailed into the port of Bangkok to give a series of flying demonstrations, part of a Far East tour that had started in Saigon and after Siam went on to Hong Kong and Canton. One of the few pieces of land suitable for an aircraft was that of the Royal Bangkok Sports Club, and here M van den Born set up his machine, a Farman Mk IV biplane named Wanda, built by the Anglo-French pilot and aircraft designer Henry Farman. Between 31st January and 6th February, with an extra day added on 9th February due to demand, Thai and foreign dignitaries were carried aloft for a glorious few minutes at a payment of fifty baht each, circling over Sala Daeng before landing back at the racecourse. The newly enthroned Rama VI, king for only four months, watched the demonstrations avidly. Bangkok Aviation Week had been organised by the Societe d’Aviation d’Extreme Orient, formed by a man named Karl Offer in response to the growing interest in aviation from the Far East.
Siam began making arrangements to send three young Thais to France for pilot training, and they left for Paris at the beginning of the following year. The training was extensive and intensive, for the three pilots were to return and form the nucleus of the Royal Thai Army flying unit. At the same time, the Ministry of War ordered seven aircraft: three Breguet biplanes and four Nieuport ii monoplanes. A fourth Breguet was purchased by Chao Phraya Aphai Pubet, who donated the machine to the Ministry, the first of a steady stream of donations from other wealthy Thais that was to play a significant part in building the nation’s fleet of planes.
The eight aircraft and the three pilots arrived in Bangkok together with a French mechanic towards the end of 1913. Once again, the Royal Bangkok Sports Club grounds were used as the runway for the fledgling air force, being not only flat but also surrounded by open fields in case of accidents. Hangars for the aircraft were built in the grounds of the Police School, which, as it does today, occupied the large area of land at the top of the racecourse. Here the new aircraft were assembled and on 29th December the first demonstration fights took place. The Sports Club’s land was however unsuitable as an increasingly busy aerodrome, being too small and too swampy, and the decision was made to move the new Aviation Section to higher ground at Don Muang. Although there was no road out to the remote airfield, the railway line passed the site, and this enabled the Army Supply Department to quickly prepare the landing strip, hangars and housing. The three pilots touched their aircraft down on the airfield for the first time on 8 th March 1915, and Don Muang remains the base for the Royal Thai Air Force to this day.
Until the Skytrain was built and rather spoiled the view, clever photographers were able to stand on the golf course in the centre of the Royal Bangkok Sports Club and photograph what is now the Four Seasons so that the splendidly designed hotel appeared to be a mansion in the centre of a vast green estate, with manicured lawns and tranquil ponds. The Club remains essentially unchanged to how it was at the dawn of aviation, a green sward in the centre of the city that has grown around it. Franklin Hurst, the English businessman who was, along with Louis Leonowens, later to buy The Oriental, had in 1890 submitted a request to establish a racetrack and sports field. A fifteen-year lease was signed between the Ministry of Interior and Mr Hurst in 1892 for an area of land at Sra Prathum, the present site, measuring 457 metres (500 yds) wide and 822 metres (900 yds) in length, at a rent of 200 baht per year. A club was formed, appearing at various times as the Gymkhana Club, Bangkok Gymkhana Club, and the Race Course Society. In 1901 Rama V granted a royal charter that established the Royal Bangkok Sports Club. The Club now holds twenty-six race meetings per year, while the only other racetrack in Bangkok, the Royal Turf Club, established at Dusit in 1961, holds another twenty-six race meetings. The Royal Bangkok Polo Club evolved out of the Sports Club in 1919, and in 1924, when it was known as the Bangkok Riding Club, leased land from the Crown Property Bureau just off Wireless Road, where it remains to this day, occupying a huge area of land tucked amongst country lanes unknown to most people, and accessed via Soi Polo.
The entrance to the Royal Bangkok Sports Club is on Henri Dunant Road and consequently much of the length of the road is lined on its east side by a long, low wall with overhanging trees. Much of the opposite side of the road also has a pleasant green appearance with an assortment of low-key buildings, and it is only when you slip into one of the little sois that will take you into Chulalongkorn University do you realise just how huge and diverse this campus really is: an enormous learning institute, right in the heart of Bangkok, yet almost invisible were it not for the throngs of students entering and leaving.
Chulalongkorn University, Thailand’s first institution of higher learning, was officially founded in 1917. Its history dates back a little further, however. During the second half of the nineteenth century, Siam was struggling to remain independent of the designs of the colonial powers, primarily Britain and France. King Chulalongkorn, Rama V, maintained a policy of strengthening the nation’s institutions and thus its sovereignty, and this hinged upon improving the educational system so as to produce capable personnel for running the public and private sectors. In 1871 he founded a school at the Royal Pages Barracks within the Grand Palace, which was later greatly enlarged and given the name Suan Kularb. Other schools followed. In 1899 Prince Damrong, a younger brother of the king, submitted a proposal to found a civil service training school, and this produced a steady stream of graduates for the government each year. Because the curriculum was founded upon court service, Siam still being an absolute monarchy meant that the students had to spend time as royal pages; so the institute took its name from the origins of the educational system and became known as the Royal Pages School.
King Chulalongkorn passed away in 1910, the threat of colonisation largely a thing of the past. But his son, Rama VI, understood that the original intention had been to establish a multidiscipline institute of higher learning, open to all, and designed to meet the developing needs of Siam. He therefore expanded the Royal Pages School and named it the Civil Service College of King Chulalongkorn, on 1st January 1911. The college received its original funding from the remaining sum of money contributed by members of the royal family, government officials and ordinary citizens to erect a statue of King Chulalongkorn. The money was not inconsiderable: with interest, it amounted to 982,672 baht and 47 satang. Rama VI also donated a palace in Pathum Wan district that had been the home of his late brother, Crown Prince Vajirunhis, for the college, together with an adjacent plot of land measuring about 523 acres in area, for its use and future expansion. First to be erected was the Administration Building, designed by a British architect, Edward Healey, in the traditional Thai architectural style. Within a few years, in 1917, the king felt the college was ready to become Chulalongkorn University. Initially there were just 380 students taking classes in four faculties, which were located in the two campuses. The Faculty of Medicine was located in an annex at Siriraj Hospital, while the Faculties of Public Administration and of Engineering were at the Administration Building and the Faculty of Arts and Science was located at Prince Vajirunhis’s palace. The palace of Crown Prince Vajirunhis, who had died from typhoid age 16, is a lost architectural treasure. It had been built in 1881 to a design by an unknown British architect, who had clearly drawn his inspiration from Windsor Castle. A three-storey riot of Gothic, with a four-storey central tower surmounted by battlements, it quickly gained the nickname “Windsor Palace” amongst the expatriate community. The Thai name was Wang Klang Thung, “palace in the centre of a field”, or more usually just Wang Mai, “new palace”, which was adopted as the name of the sub-district that today covers the site. When it became part of the Chulalongkorn campus,
Windsor Palace was modified to hold classes and laboratories, and Prince Mahidol himself instructed medical students here in pre-clinical courses.
Following the Siamese revolution in 1932 that abolished absolute monarchy, the property came under the Ministry of Education’s Department of Physical Education. In 1935 the palace was demolished to make way for the Suphachalasai Stadium, part of the National Stadium complex. Elements made from imported marble have been excavated in recent years and stand now outside the Chulalongkorn University School of Sports Science.
Walking through the Chulalongkorn University campus today, the grace of the older buildings in their parkland setting provides an appropriate framework for higher education, while even the later, more prosaic structures have been softened by the greenery. Before the land was built upon it was overgrown with vegetation and rain trees, and these trees have become a symbol of the university. Generations of students have read and reviewed their lessons under the shade of the rain trees. With the old trees dying off in the middle of the last century, King Bhumibol visited the campus and planted five saplings in 1962, three on the right side and two on the left side of the football pitch in front of the auditorium. Most recently, at the time of the university’s eightieth anniversary celebrations, a programme was undertaken to plant eighty rain trees throughout the campus.
Although most of the extensive land holdings of the university are related to the campus itself, an interesting diversion was made in the mid 1960s when Siam Square was laid out on university land immediately to the north of the campus. The aim was to lease out the land to shop owners and use the funds for benefitting the university. Siam Square, however, quickly took on a life of its own as Bangkok’s first shopping mall district, a trendy place around which the city’s equivalent of the Swinging Sixties revolved. Nowadays, Siam Square is Bangkok’s prime shopping and leisure district, the building of the
Skytrain interchange having been decisive in adding accessibility for a destination that is also serviced by some twenty-five bus routes and even by boat, via the Saen Saeb canal. Consequently, this is the place where youngsters continue to meet, and the thirteen steps in front of Siam Centre have been one of Bangkok’s prime people-watching locations for two generations.
Siam Square was laid out in 1965, and a couple of years later, at the beginning of 1967, the Siam Theatre opened, specialising in the showing of foreign movies. The Lido Theatre was built the following year, and the Scala appeared in 1970. The Bangkok Bank building, British Council building, and the Siam Bowl were all built during this period. In the late 1970s, with the economy flourishing, a host of fast food joints, boutiques and tutoring services opened. A small police station with four officers, plus a fire station, was set up on Siam Square Soi 7, opposite Siam Theatre, in 1980. mbk Centre, also known as Mahboonkrong (after the parents of developer Sirichai Bulakul, Mah and Boonkrong) was opened in 1985 on the western boundary of the university’s land. Rama I Road marks the northern boundary of the square, and the commercial developments on the other side of the road, although they are assimilated into the notion of Siam Square, actually stand on royal land that was originally the grounds of Sra Pathum Palace. In terms of sheer size and glamour, they outdo the humbler premises within the square. The first beer garden, now a familiar sight in front of shopping malls throughout the city at the end of the rainy season, was a Kloster event held at Siam Discovery Centre in the mid-1980s. The large courtyard area between Siam Discovery and Siam Centre is today used for the same purpose, and for other events. The opening a few years ago of Siam Paragon, the Kempinski Hotel, Centara Grand and the Bangkok Convention Centre and CentralWorld have all added to the allure of Siam Square, and indeed, to the traffic congestion. The Skytrain and its associated elevated walkway is the best way to travel here.
Henri Dunant, in case you were wondering, had nothing to do with Chulalongkom University. He was the Swiss founder of the Red Cross. The Thai Red Cross lies on the other, southern side of the university campus, between the university and Rama IV Road. In 1893, a territorial dispute between France and Siam over land along the Mekong River flared into a brief war that resulted in many casualties on both sides. There was no charitable organisation available to offer medical aid to the soldiers and civilians, and a lady of the Siamese Royal Court, Thanpuying Plien Pasakornravongs, gathered together a group of female volunteers and proposed to Queen Savang Vadhana that the king’s permission be sought to set up “The Red Unalong Society of Siam” for this purpose. King Chulalongkorn’s response to the proposal was favourable, for he understood how the society’s creation could further help the progress of Siam. Funds totalling 443,716 baht were collected, and Queen Savang Vadhana was appointed as patron, Queen Saowapha Bhongsri as society president, and Tanpuying Plien as society secretary. The names Red Unalom Society and Red Cross Society were used alternately until 1910, when the former disappeared and the name Siamese Red Cross Society was adopted. Later this was changed to the Thai Red Cross Society, and the organisation was officially recognised by the International Committee of the Red Cross in 1920.
The Snake Farm within the Red Cross compound, formerly the Pasteur Institute, is now known as the Queen Saowapha Memorial Institute, and was set up to produce anti-venom serum for snakebite victims nationwide. The Pasteur Institute of Paris helped to develop this facility, which was opened in 1923 by Queen Savang. It was only the world’s second snake farm, the first being in Brazil. Venomous snakes are milked daily to make snakebite antidote, one of Bangkok’s oldest and most popular tourist attractions. The Chulalongkorn Faculty of Medicine at Siriraj Hospital evolved to encompass several disciplines, including dentistry, pharmacy and veterinary science, and eventually many of these were carved away to form what is now the Faculty of Medicine Siriraj Hospital, part of Mahidol University. Chulalongkorn’s Faculty of Medicine and Chulalongkorn University Hospital today stand on a large area of land immediately to the south of the Royal Bangkok Sports Club, the hospital having been opened in 1914.
Sandwiched into a piece of land between the Club and the Faculty is the Lumpini Pumping Station, drawing its water supplies from the Bangkhen Water Treatment Plant, in the north of the city, and using four massive pumps to deliver water supplies to the surrounding area. Lumpini is one of twenty distribution stations that operate in conjunction with three main transmission stations to supply the city, and it was built in 1979. Despite its enormous pumping capacity, Lumpini’s output can be controlled from a single desktop computer. The distinctive water towers that supply the pressure have in recent years had offices built into the previously empty space between the support struts, forming a practical and economic use of land to house the Thai Red Cross aids Research Centre, the Red Cross symbol woven in a striking fashion into the wall of the compound.
Ratchadamri Road, leading north from Silom, had been completed in 1903, largely to provide access to the Royal Bangkok Sports Club. The land on the opposite side of the road to Chulalongkorn Hospital was an open field that had recently become popularly known as Sala Daeng, after the red-coloured pavilion of the same name that formed a stop on the Paknam Railway Rama VI began in the early 1920s to plan what was designed to be the greatest exhibition ever to take place in Siam. The first had been the National Exhibition, held at Sanam Luang in 1882 to celebrate Bangkok’s centenary, and other fairs had been held over the years since at Dusit, and a series of large agricultural fairs had been held adjacent to Sra Pathum Palace. Now the king planned a magnificent showcase for the nation, to be held in its own exhibition grounds. He granted the Sala Daeng field for this purpose, a huge area of 142 acres, and the grounds were landscaped to accommodate the various pavilions to their best effect. Two lakes were dug in the northeastern and southwestern parts of the park: the large lake and its islands near Ratchadamri Road was to display the works of the Treasury, while the smaller one near Wireless Road was to be surrounded by foreign commercial pavilions, Chinatown enterprises, and produce from what was then known as Monthon Ratchaburi, the Ratchaburi Circle, five provinces close to Bangkok. Each ministry was to have its own pavilion, while three exhibition halls for major industries would be placed near Rama iv Road. Canals such as the Silom, Hua Lampong, Ratchadamri and Saen Saeb canals would provide access, along with the roads, and the government granted the concession for a new tramway, the Silom Line, that would run from Charoen Krung Road to Pratunam. The Samsen tramway was extended from its Hua Lampong terminus to Sathorn Road via Sala Daeng. The opening date for the exhibition was set for 23rd January 1926. Then, on 25th November 1925, the king died, at the age of 44. The exhibition was officially cancelled on 1st January, and Lumpini Park, named after the birthplace of the Buddha, became a public park in the manner of the great parks of Europe. Corrado Feroci sculpted the statue of the king erected in 1941 at the entrance to the park, and the open area around the statue is today used for public ceremonies.
World History
