Suphanburi

The old town behind Suphanburi is U Thong, an ancient moated town on the plain west of the Chao Phraya, enclosed by an earthen rampart and a moat about 1.7 kilometres long. It was a centre of Dvaravati culture, with Buddhist monasteries inside the walls and on the hills to the west, and a seventh-century copper inscription records gifts to a linga. Beads, coins and other finds show contact with India, China and the Middle East. The old region was called Suphannabhum, the land of gold.

Tradition, as Prince Damrong recorded it, says that an epidemic emptied U Thong, that its ruler Ramathibodi moved east and founded Ayutthaya around 1350, and that the people moved some thirty kilometres north-east to a new moated town on the Tha Chin river, Suphanburi. Ramathibodi placed his brother-in-law there as governor, who took the Ayutthaya throne in 1370 as Borommarachathirat I; the Suphanburi line then contested the crown with the Lopburi line for decades. Later Suphanburi stood on the frontier between Siam and Burma, and according to the chronicles Naresuan killed the Burmese heir apparent in an elephant duel at Nong Sarai, a few kilometres from the town, on 18 January 1593.