Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya

Ayutthaya (officially Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya) is a province in central Thailand, north of Bangkok. Its capital city, also called Ayutthaya, was the seat of the Kingdom of Siam and a prosperous trading port from the 14th century, until it was razed by the Burmese in 1767. The old city ruins, with Buddhist temples, monasteries and statues, now form the Historic City of Ayutthaya.Ayutthaya was founded in 1351[a] by King U Thong, who went there to escape a smallpox outbreak in Lopburi and proclaimed it the capital of his kingdom, often referred to as the Ayutthaya Kingdom or Siam. It is named after the ancient Indian city of Ayodhya, synonymous with Rama, the 7th incarnation of the Hindu God Vishnu. Ayutthaya became the second Siamese capital after Sukhothai.It is estimated that Ayutthaya by the year 1600 had a population of about 300,000, with the population perhaps reaching 1,000,000 around 1700, making it one of the world’s largest cities at that time,when it was sometimes known as the “Venice of the East”