placeThe moat

คูเมือง · Khu Mueang

Six and a half kilometres of water, and a square that is not quite square.

Hartmann Linge · CC BY-SA 4.0

18.7883, 98.9855 · OpenStreetMap · The map

What it is

The water square around the old city: 6.54 km round, about 1.6 by 1.7 km, the north side the longest at 1.67 km. About 13 m wide now, up to 25 m once, 4 m deep at most. Dug at the founding in 1296, deepened and given its corner bastions by later rulers.

The long version

About 603 m of the original brick wall survive. The municipality, founded in 1936, began demolishing sections in 1948 to build the roads that now run on both banks. The wall and moat were registered as a national monument in 1935, thirteen years before the demolition began.

Inference — every measurement on this site starts from this square. It is the one thing in the city that has not moved in 730 years, so it is the ruler everything else is laid against.

Connected to

• The moat loop The roads on its banks.
• Hua Lin Corner Where its water comes in.
• The grid score, zone by zone What the streets inside it measure.
• คู khu The word.

Named here by

• The moat loop The water.
• The bridges over the moat What they cross.
• The UNESCO nomination and the roads under it The core.
• 1296 — the square The square.
• The Lanna city map The square it draws.
• The grid score, zone by zone The square.
• Wats, zone by zone The square.
• เวียง wiang What surrounds it.
• Kawila What he restored.
• Mangrai What he dug.

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