Pha That Luang
Laotian Buddhist stupa
Pha That Luang (Lao: ທາດຫຼວງ or ພຣະທາດຫລວງ; pronounced [pʰā.tʰâːt lǔa̯ŋ] "Great Stupa") is a gold-covered Buddhist stupa in Vientiane, the capital city of Laos. Since its initial establishment, suggested to be in the 3rd century AD, the stupa has undergone reconstructions, including in the 1930s, due to invasions of the area.
History
Buddhist missionaries from the Mauryan Empire are believed to have been sent by Emperor Ashoka, including Bury Chan or Praya Chanthabury Pasithisak and five Arahanta monks, who brought a sacred relic (believed to be the breastbone) of the Buddha and enshrined it into the stupa in the 3rd century BC.
In the 16th century, King Setthathirat relocated his capital from Luang Prabang to Vientiane and ordered the construction of the temple in 1566. It was constructed about 4 km from the centre of Vientiane, at the end of Pha That Luang Road, and named accordingly. The bases had a length of 69 metres each, and the stupa was 45 metres high, surrounded by 30 smaller stupas.
In 1641, a Dutch envoy of the Dutch East India Company, Gerrit van Wuysthoff, visited Vientiane and was ceremonially received by King Sourigna Vongsa at the temple. He wrote that he was particularly impressed by the "enormous pyramid ... and the top was covered with gold leaf weighing about a thousand pounds". The stupa was repeatedly plundered by the Burmese, Siamese, and Chinese.
Pha That Luang was destroyed by the Thai invasion in 1828.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1059720. Authority coordinates are 17.976, 102.634. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1566, 1641 and 1828.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pha That Luang” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.