Wat Suwannaram

This temple on a canal in the Thonburi area is prized among scholars for its ordination hall murals, considered some of the finest surviving examples of late-eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Thai painting. The walls depict scenes from the Buddha's past lives and battle imagery rendered with unusual liveliness. Founded in the Ayutthaya period and later restored under the early Bangkok kings, the compound sees few foreign visitors, and reaching it evokes the canal life that once defined the west bank.