Nakhon Pathom

Nakhon Pathom (Thai: นครปฐม, pronounced [náʔkʰɔ̄ːn pā.tʰǒm]) is a city (thesaban nakhon) in central Thailand, the capital of Nakhon Pathom province, 57 km west of Bangkok. The city's principal landmark is the giant Phra Pathommachedi. It has Thailand's only Bhikkhuni temple, Wat Song Thammakanlayani (วัดทรงธรรมกัลยาณี), which admits women from abroad. It houses a campus of Silpakorn University within the former Sanam Chandra Palace. Nakhon Pathom is often said to have stood on the Gulf of Thailand two thousand years ago, the coast having since moved south through sedimentation. How far inland the sea reached is disputed. Phōngsi Wanasin and Thiwa Supcanya found the ancient towns of the plain arranged in two rows above the 3.5-metre contour, which David K. Wyatt reads as the fringes of a plain then largely under water rather than as a shoreline; on his account Nakhon Chai Si stands considerably higher than the ground to its east. Trongjai Hutangkura's reconsideration of the old shoreline, as Stephen A. Murphy reports it, finds that the survey it rests on overestimated the height of the mean sea level, and that what was mapped as coast was a floodplain. Nakhon Pathom, with Ratchaburi and Sing Buri, is often counted among the oldest towns in Thailand, on a foundation date given as early as 40 BC. It was for a long time one of the principal centres of Dvaravati.