Wat Mahathat is the spiritual and political heart of Sukhothai — the temple of the kings, where coronations and great state ceremonies took place. It sits in the geographical centre of the walled city and once contained nearly 200 individual stupas, chedis, viharas and Buddha images within a single moated enclosure 200 metres long.
The dominant structure is the central chedi, capped by a lotus-bud finial of a kind that became the defining motif of Sukhothai-period religious architecture — slender, tapered, and uniquely Thai, owing little to the earlier Khmer prangs or the bell-shaped Sri Lankan stupas. Around it cluster eight smaller chedis. The ruined viharas in front still hold the bases of large seated Buddha images, and a vast standing Buddha (about 12 metres tall) called Phra Attharot stands in a mondop to one side. Best visited very early or just before closing, when the light is low and the crowds have thinned.