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Tha Phae Gate in Chiang Mai: the brick gate with its grey wooden door and the name plaque in Thai, Lanna script and English, under a blue sky

Old City, Chiang Mai

Tha Phae Gate the east gate of the old city, and what is really old about it

A 1980s gate on a site from 1296, and the starting point of the Sunday market. What to look at, what is old, and when to come.

Tha Phae Gate is the east entrance to Chiang Mai's old city, the square of moat and walls laid out by King Mangrai from 1296. The brick gate and the stretches of crenellated wall on either side of it were rebuilt in 1985–86, from an old photograph and archaeological evidence. The site is more than seven centuries old; the masonry is not.1,2

It is free, open at all hours, and ten to twenty minutes is enough to see it. What makes it worth more than a photograph is knowing what you are looking at: why it carries the name of a raft landing on a river a kilometre away, what it was rebuilt from, and why the streets around it fill up on Sunday evenings, and the square on festival nights.

Our take: Worth a short stop, not a special trip. Come in the morning, when the sun should be on its outer face, or after dark, when the gate and its wall are floodlit, and pair it with the Sunday market or the temples of Tha Phae Road. In the late afternoon the outer face is in shade.

Best for
A first bearing in the old city; photographers in the morning or after dark; anyone curious about how much of old Chiang Mai is original.
Skip it if
You are after ancient masonry: this is a 1980s gate. For centuries-old brick, go to Wat Chedi Luang, 9 minutes away on foot.

Reading the gate in ten minutes

The masonry dates from the 1980s, but it copies an old form. Four details on the wall, four at the opening.

A straight-on view of the brick wall beside Tha Phae Gate: pointed merlons pierced with small cross-shaped loopholes along the top, a projecting band of brick below them, and a row of small holes near the base

The wall beside the gate, read from top to bottom

  1. Merlons. The pointed brick blocks along the top. The gaps between them are the crenels of a defensive parapet.
  2. Cross-shaped loopholes. One small loophole in each merlon. Here they are a reconstructed form, not a working defence.
  3. A projecting band. Several courses of brick stepped forward, marking where the parapet starts.
  4. Small holes at the foot. A regular row near the foot of the wall, along its whole length.
The opening of Tha Phae Gate seen from the square: a cyclist rides through between the two brick towers, past the wooden door and its tall timber post, with a modern hotel rising behind the wall

The opening, from the square

  1. The door. A single leaf of grey, weathered planks, standing open. A small wheel is fixed at its foot.
  2. The timber post. A tall wooden post set against the brick, beside the door.
  3. The name plaque. The gate's name in Thai, in the old Lanna script of the north, and in English.
  4. Inside the walls. Through the opening, Moon Muang Road and the old city. A modern hotel stands just behind.

A gate you can walk through

The opening is not a monument behind a rope: people walk and cycle through it all day, between the square outside and Moon Muang Road inside. Tha Phae is also the only gate of the old city that still has a door, as Citylife noted in 2016.3

There is no ticket and no information panel about the reconstruction. Against the wall, to the right of the opening as you face it from the square (that is, to the north), stands a white stele, an inscribed stone slab between two posts; we could not read it, and we found no source that describes it.

A site from 1296, a gate from the 1980s

What is old here is the place of the gate and the line of the walls. The gate itself has been taken down and rebuilt more than once.

Chiang Mai was laid out by King Mangrai from 1296 as a square of moat and walls, with a gate on the east side, towards the Ping River. That gate was not called Tha Phae. Its name was Chiang Ruak; Tha Phae, the raft landing, was the name of a second gate further out, in an outer earth rampart on the road to the river. In the 19th century the name spread to the inner gate, and it stayed there once the outer gate had gone.1

The brick gate you see was built in 1985–86. It was not restored from surviving masonry: it was drawn from an 1899 photograph of a Chiang Mai gate and from archaeological evidence, and the sources disagree on which gate it shows.1,2

The gate through the centuries

  1. 1296

    from the chronicle.Mangrai founds the city; its east gate is Chiang Ruak

    According to the Chiang Mai Chronicle, the city's own history, work on the moat and the walls began at the north-east corner and went on round the city. The east gate was called Chiang Ruak, after the stockade, ruak, put up around Mangrai's camp on that spot.1

  2. 1517

    from the chronicle.The walls are rebuilt in brick

    The chronicle records bricks moulded to rebuild the city walls under King Kaeo of Lanna, the northern kingdom that had Chiang Mai as its capital. The often repeated idea that Kawila, who resettled the city in the 1790s, was the first to build them in brick does not fit this entry.1

  3. 1531–1826

    from the chronicle.Two gates, and a raft landing

    A village called Ban Tha Phae, the raft landing, appears in the chronicle in 1531. In 1826 it still names two separate gates: Chiang Ruak, and a Tha Phae gate in an outer earth rampart, further east on the road to the river, which a research report places near today's Wat Saen Fang.1

  4. late 1790s

    sources disagree.Kawila resettles an empty city

    After some twenty years of near abandonment, Kawila, the ruler who refounded Chiang Mai, brings people back and has the walls restored. The same report dates the refounding to 1796; the English Wikipedia, after a Thai chronicle, has him entering the city in February 1797.1,4,5

  5. 1873–1897

    from the chronicle.Inner and outer Tha Phae

    Under Inthawichayanon, ruler of Chiang Mai from 1873 to 1897, the old Chiang Ruak is already called the inner Tha Phae gate. A map of his reign shows it as a double gate. Once the outer gate had gone, the name stayed with the inner one.1

  6. 1899

    dated.The photograph

    A photograph of one of Chiang Mai's gates, taken in 1899, later serves as the model for the rebuild. Which gate it shows is disputed: one book sees the southern Chiang Mai Gate, another the old Tha Phae.1,2

  7. 1948–1967

    sources disagree.Demolition, then a gate remade by the city

    Long stretches of the walls come down to widen the roads. Thai Wikipedia dates the first demolitions to 1948, without a source; a 2025 Chiang Mai News article, which cites an essay by the historian Nidhi Eoseewong, has the gate itself taken down in 1960; the same research report places the works in the mid-1960s. In 1966–67 the municipal engineer repairs the two towers that by then flank the opening, and rebuilds the stretches of wall on either side.1,2,4,6

  8. 1985–86

    dated.Today's gate

    At the provincial governor's initiative, the gate of the 1960s is pulled down and a new one built, designed by a regional unit of the Fine Arts Department, Thailand's heritage agency, from the 1899 photograph and archaeological evidence, and built by the provincial public works. Some accounts run the work into 1987.1,2,7

  9. 2023

    dated.A pillar found inside the gate

    On 1 November 2023 a Fine Arts Department team opened a chamber built into the wall of the gate, which no one had opened for nearly forty years, and found an inscribed stone pillar, about 1.9 m tall, in Lanna script, one face written in mirror image. Set at the gate in 1966, it was removed when the works began in 1985 and placed in this chamber once the new gate was finished.2,7

Since 2015 the city has been on UNESCO's tentative list. The nomination filed in 2026 includes the walls, the moat, the five gates (Tha Phae among them) and the four corner bastions; a decision is expected in 2027. Chiang Mai is not a World Heritage site yet.9

Morning, late afternoon or after dark

The gate faces east, on the square side. That decides when its outer face is in the sun.

Nearly the same view, five days apart

Tha Phae Gate and its square in the late afternoon: visitors walk across the paving in front of the crenellated wall, long tree shadows stretch towards the camera, and Hotel M stands behind the gate
22 October, 16:21. Late afternoon: the sun is behind the wall, the outer face is in shade, and the tree shadows stretch towards you.
Tha Phae Gate at night from the square: the wall glows orange under lamps set in the paving, small groups of visitors take photos, and the hotel behind is lit against a black sky
27 October, 19:28. After dark, lamps set in the paving light the wall from below. The hotel behind the gate is impossible to keep out of the frame.

Morning: the outer face should be in the sun

The outer face, with the door and the plaque, looks east over the square: by the sun's path, it should be lit from sunrise until around midday. We cannot show it: all our daytime photographs were taken between 16:19 and 16:31, when that face was already in shade.

The inner face of the wall beside Tha Phae Gate, along Moon Muang Road, glowing in low afternoon sun, with a red songthaew and traffic lights at the crossing
22 October, 16:31. At the same hour the inner face, along Moon Muang Road, takes the low western sun. Walk through the opening and look back.

After dark

Both faces are floodlit from below once night falls. On our visit, a Tuesday at about 19:25, a few small groups were photographing each other in front of the plaque: part of the scene rather than an obstacle.

The inner face of Tha Phae Gate at night from Moon Muang Road: floodlit brickwork stepped like a staircase climbs the wall beside a narrow doorway, with the back of the gate's wooden door on the right
27 October, 19:26. The inner face at night: brickwork stepped like a staircase climbs the wall beside a narrow doorway, and the back of the wooden door shows on the right.

The square, the moat and the road to the river

The gate is a hinge: the old city behind it, the road to the Ping River in front.

The square lies outside the wall and fills the gap in the moat: the water runs on either side of it, to the north and to the south. By our measurement on OpenStreetMap it is about 190 metres long and 55 wide. On its east side starts Tha Phae Road, which runs straight for about a kilometre to the Ping River at Nawarat Bridge; the road's name, the raft landing, points to that river bank. Through the opening, on the old-city side, Ratchadamnoen Road leads straight on to Wat Phra Singh.10

Chiang Mai's east moat looking north from beside Tha Phae Gate square: a fountain in the water, trees along both banks and a tall white hotel on the outer side
22 October, 16:26. The east moat, looking north from the edge of the square, with a fountain and a hotel on the outer bank.

Sunday Walking Street

On Sundays, from late afternoon, Ratchadamnoen Road is closed to traffic and the market runs from just inside the gate to Wat Phra Singh, a little over a kilometre. It began in 2002 on Tha Phae Road itself and moved inside the walls in 2004. Published hours vary from one source to the next; our night-markets guide says when to arrive.11

Festivals on the square

The square is one of the city's main open-air stages: the municipal opening of Songkran, the Thai New Year, in April; the New Year countdown; and Yi Peng, the northern festival of lights at the full moon of the twelfth lunar month, usually in November. In 2025 the parade of krathong, the decorated offerings floated on the water, left from here at 19:00 for the municipal offices by the river. For 2026 the province has announced the festival for 23 to 25 November, and the main krathong parade is planned for 25 November; its time and route were not yet published when we checked.12,13,14,15,16

Sky lanterns are another matter. The province allows releases only on 24 and 25 November, from 19:00 to 01:00, and the Mueang district office has asked that none be released in the city: do not release one at the gate. Our Yi Peng article covers the festival and the lanterns.14,16

The gate also has a part in Suep Chata Mueang, the yearly rite to extend the city's destiny: it is performed at the same moment at ten points (the five gates, the four corner bastions and the city's navel at the Three Kings Monument). In 2025 it was held on 19 June, in 2026 on 4 June.17,18

On foot from the gate

East along Tha Phae Road, three temples with Burmese-style buildings: Wat Mahawan, about 3 minutes away; Wat Bupparam, about 7; and Wat Saen Fang, about 9, near the place where the outer Tha Phae gate is thought to have stood. West, inside the walls: Wat Chedi Luang, about 9 minutes, and the Three Kings Monument, about 10. Further on, Warorot market is about 12 minutes away towards the river, and Wat Phra Singh about 15, at the far end of the Sunday market. Walking times are our own estimates on OpenStreetMap.1,10

Practical: rules, time, getting there

Checked in October 2026.

On the square

  • Chiang Mai Municipality sign on Tha Phae Gate square with six pictograms: no buying pigeon food or feeding the pigeons, no alcohol, no spitting, no smoking, mind your valuables, keep the area clean

    Municipal rules

    No feeding the pigeons or buying food for them, no alcohol, no spitting, no smoking

    Chiang Mai Municipality sign photographed on the square on 22 October 2026. It also asks you to mind your valuables and to keep the square clean.

  • Entry

    Free, no ticket, open at all hours

    A public square with no barrier and no ticket office: we saw none on 22 and 27 October 2026. During festivals, stages and road closures change the layout.

  • Time

    10 to 20 minutes for the gate alone

    Longer on a Sunday evening, when it is the starting point of the market.

Pigeons: fewer than older guides suggest

Older guides promise a square full of pigeons and people feeding them. Today the municipal sign forbids feeding them or buying food for them, and in June 2026 the local press reported daily patrols from 08:00 to 20:00 and far fewer birds. Don't count on the pigeon photo.19

Getting there

It is the easiest landmark to give a driver: Pratu Tha Phae, pratu meaning gate. Red shared trucks, the songthaews, cost 30 baht a person within the city in a 2024 report, but the driver may wait to fill up, or ask more for a private ride: agree the fare before you get in. The ride-hailing apps Grab and Bolt also operate in Chiang Mai. From Warorot market or the Night Bazaar, it is a walk of about a quarter of an hour at most.20

Access and crossings

The square is flat and paved. We did not check every kerb at the crossings on Moon Muang Road, where traffic is heavy and one-way: cross at the lights.

Drones

Chiang Mai airport is about 4 km from the gate, well inside the 9 km radius around airports where drones may not fly without prior approval, and flights over built-up areas and crowds also need authorisation. A drone must also be registered with the civil aviation authority, the CAAT, and the telecoms regulator, the NBTC, and each flight declared on the CAAT portal at least three days ahead; flights are limited to daylight. In practice, do not plan to fly here.21,22

What we don't know about Tha Phae Gate

Four questions the sources leave open.

  • Which gate does the 1899 photograph show?

    The 1985–86 gate was modelled on it. One book identifies it as the southern Chiang Mai Gate, another as the old Tha Phae; the research report we relied on says only 'one of the city's gates'.1,2

  • When exactly was the old gate pulled down?

    Thai Wikipedia gives 1948 for the first demolitions of the walls, without a source; a 2025 Chiang Mai News article, which cites an essay by the historian Nidhi Eoseewong, says 1960 for the gate; a research report places the works in the mid-1960s. The demolitions may have come in stages. None of the sources we found settles it with a document.1,4,6

  • What is the white stele north of the opening?

    An inscribed stone slab between two posts with finials, against the wall on the square side. We could not read it and found no description. It is not necessarily the pillar found in 2023, which was kept in a closed chamber in the wall of the gate; where that pillar is kept today, we did not find out.2,7

  • How old are the wooden door and the plaque?

    Probably no older than the 1985–86 gate, but no source we found dates either of them.

Keep reading

Sources, and how we checked

The photographs come from our visits on 22 October 2026, between 16:19 and 16:31, and 27 October 2026, between 19:24 and 19:29; the municipal sign was photographed on the 22nd. Distances and walking times are our own estimates on OpenStreetMap, rounded; the side of the gate that gets the morning sun is deduced from its orientation on the same map. History, rules and events come from the sources below, consulted on 28 October 2026; where they disagree, the page says so. Numbers in the text refer to this list.

  1. 1. The Chiang Mai Chronicle on Chiang Ruak, the stockade, the outer Tha Phae gate near Wat Saen Fang and the brick rebuilding of 1517; the refounding of 1796; the double gate on the map of Inthawichayanon's reign; the works of the mid-1960s; the 1985–86 reconstruction from an 1899 photograph: Phudet Saensa (Chiang Mai Rajabhat University), history of the Dok Ngoen municipal school community, Thailand Research Fund research report, c. 2011, held by the TSRI library (in Thai)
  2. 2. The municipal works of 1966–67, the governor's project of 1985, the Fine Arts unit that designed it, the photograph and its disputed subject, the inscribed pillar set at the gate in 1966: Prachya Chaikaew, The riddle of the gate's inscription and the newly built Tha Phae, Lanner News, 10 November 2023 (in Thai), after the book Chiang Mai City Wall (1986)
  3. 3. Tha Phae, the only gate of the old city that still has a door: Pim Suebsaeng, Thapae Gate, Chiang Mai Citylife, 25 May 2016
  4. 4. Kawila's major restoration of the walls; the first demolitions of the walls dated to 1948, without a cited source: Chiang Mai city walls (กำแพงเมืองเชียงใหม่), Wikipedia (Thai)
  5. 5. Kawila's resettlement of Chiang Mai: his entry into the city in February 1797, after some twenty years of abandonment: Kawila, Wikipedia (English), after Sarassawadee Ongsakul, History of Lan Na (Silkworm Books, 2005), and the Phongsawadan Yonok (1908)
  6. 6. The gate taken down in 1960 to widen the road and replaced by two new pillars: Chiang Mai News, 24 February 2025 (in Thai), which links an essay by the historian Nidhi Eoseewong in Silpa-mag
  7. 7. The inscribed pillar found inside the gate in November 2023; works dated 1986–87: Sanook Travel, 3 November 2023, relaying the Fine Arts Department's Office 7 in Chiang Mai (in Thai)
  8. 8. Professor Surapol Damrikul: the city's present gates are new structures on old sites: Thai PBS, 26 September 2022 (in Thai)
  9. 9. The walls, the moat, the five gates and the four corner bastions in Chiang Mai's World Heritage nomination; decision expected in 2027: The Nation, 19 July 2026
  10. 10. Tha Phae Road, from the Ping at Nawarat Bridge to the gate, and the Burmese-style buildings of its temples: Tha Phae Road, Chiang Mai National Archives, Fine Arts Department (in Thai)
  11. 11. The Sunday walking street: Tha Phae Road from February 2002, Ratchadamnoen Road from 2004: Ratthanan Pongwiritthon and Pakphum Pakvipas, Suranaree Journal of Social Science 8(2), December 2014, pp. 17–39 (in Thai)
  12. 12. The municipal Songkran opening on the square, 13 April 2026: Thansettakij, 3 April 2026 (in Thai)
  13. 13. The municipal New Year countdown on the square, 29 to 31 December 2025: Thansettakij, 29 December 2025 (in Thai)
  14. 14. Yi Peng 2026 announced for 23 to 25 November; lantern releases allowed on 24 and 25 November, from 19:00 to 01:00: Government Public Relations Department, Chiang Mai office, 7 October 2026 (in Thai)
  15. 15. The 2025 krathong parade, from the square at 19:00 to the municipal offices by the river: Saranae News, 6 November 2025 (in Thai)
  16. 16. Yi Peng 2026 dates and the krathong parade on 25 November; the Mueang district office asks that no lanterns be released in the city: Chiang Mai News, 23 September 2026 (in Thai)
  17. 17. Suep Chata Mueang 2026 on 4 June, at the five gates, the four corner bastions and the city's navel, for the 730th anniversary of the city: Thai Post, 4 June 2026 (in Thai)
  18. 18. The annual Sueb Chata Muang ceremony, held at ten sites at once including the five gates, 19 June 2025: Chiang Mai Citylife, 19 June 2025
  19. 19. Municipal patrols on the square from 08:00 to 20:00 and the measures against pigeon feeding: Tha Pae Gate cleared of pigeons and food vendors after crackdown, Chiang Mai Citylife, 30 June 2026
  20. 20. Shared red trucks at 30 baht a person in town: Thai PBS, 18 May 2024 (in Thai)
  21. 21. Drones: no flights within 9 km of an airport without prior approval; registration with the NBTC and the CAAT; flights declared three days ahead; daylight only: Flying a drone in Thailand: updated guide for tourists, TAT News (Tourism Authority of Thailand), 29 June 2026, updated 17 July 2026
  22. 22. Drone flights: registration, notice to the CAAT and daytime hours: Government Public Relations Department, 1 September 2025

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