Chiang Mai was founded in 1296 as Lan Na’s new capital
Chiang Mai—“new city”—anchors northern Thailand some 700 km from Bangkok in the highlands. King Mangrai founded it in 1294 or 1296 on a Lawa site called Wiang Nopburi, replacing Chiang Rai as Lan Na’s capital. UNESCO named it a Creative City of Crafts and Folk Arts in 2017.
The old heart is roughly a one-mile square once walled in red brick with a surrounding moat; fragments remain. The official municipality covers only 40.2 km² of Mueang Chiang Mai and about 127,000 people across four wards—Nakhon Ping, Sriwichai, Mengrai, and Kawila—though metro sprawl reaches Hang Dong, San Sai, and Saraphi.
Ping River trade routes powered its rise. Phayu enlarged defenses and built Wat Phra Singh. As Lan Na declined, the Toungoo Empire occupied the city in 1556. It joined the Thonburi Kingdom in 1774 through an agreement with Kawila after King Taksin helped expel the Burmese, but renewed Burmese attacks left it abandoned from 1776 to 1791.
The numbers mislead because the boundary is frozen. Chiang Mai became Siam's first city municipality on 29 March 1935, growing out of a 1915 sanitary district, and its area rose from 17.5 to 40.2 square kilometres on 5 April 1983, the only enlargement ever. The wider urban area now tops 1.2 million people, and the province about 1.8 million. In 2006 the city gave its name to the Chiang Mai Initiative agreed by ASEAN with China, Japan and South Korea, and TripAdvisor ranked it 24th among the world's best destinations in 2014. Its emblem shows the Doi Suthep stupa above mountain clouds, with a nāga for the Ping River and rice stalks for fertile land.
Source: Chiang Mai
