Wat Mahathat is among Ayutthaya's oldest and most significant temple ruins, founded in the fourteenth century as the seat of the kingdom's supreme Buddhist patriarch and once crowned by a towering central prang that has since collapsed. Its worldwide fame, though, rests on a single quiet image: the weathered stone head of a Buddha cradled in the gnarled roots of a bodhi tree, which over the centuries have grown to embrace it. Nobody recorded exactly how the head came to rest there after the city fell, which only adds to its mystery, and it has become one of Thailand's most photographed heritage sights. Around it stretch the atmospheric remains of the monastery: the stump of the great prang, brick chedis, and rows of seated Buddha figures whose heads were lost to looting and war. It is treated with deep reverence, so when photographing the tree-bound head visitors are asked to crouch, keeping their own head no higher than the Buddha's.
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