Nama: Idah Galuh Ayu Safitri

NIM: D0419026

The Historic City of Ayutthaya

The Historic City of Ayutthaya (Thai: อุทยานประวัตศ

ิ าสตร ์พระนครศรีอยุธยา) is

one of the UNESCO world heritage site. It was the second capital of Siamese
Kingdom which founded in 1350 and flourised from 14th to 18th.1 It’s managed as a
historical park protected by Thai law under the Act on Ancient Monuments, Antiques,
Objects of Art and National Museum.

Ayutthaya has a rigid and systematic planning city grid centuries and located
at a strategic area because surrounded by three rivers that connecting the city to the
sea. The large palaces and the Buddhist monasteries constructed in the capital, for
example at Wat Mahathat and Wat Phra Si Sanphet. The Historic City of Ayutthaya
and Associated Historic Towns were granted Cultural World Heritage status by the
World Heritage Committee on December 13, 1991 following the cultural criteria “to
bear a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a
civilization which is living or which has disappeared”.2

The city was ideally situated at the head of the Gulf of Siam, the equi distant
between India and China and well upstream to be protected from Arab and European
powers who were expanding their influence in the region even as Ayutthaya was
itself consolidating it’s own power to fill the vacuum left by the fall of Angkor. As a

1
World Heritage Centre, Historic City of Ayutthaya.

2
Somyot Ongkhluap, Tourism Impacts on the Ayutthaya World Heritage Site: Measuring the
Perceptions of the Host Community, (Journal of International and Thai Tourism Vol. 8 No. 1, 2012)
result, Ayutthaya became a center of economics and trade at the regional and global
levels, and an important connecting point between the East and the West.

The uniqueness of Ayutthaya make this site become a great place for the
center of commerce and soft diplomacy in Thailand. The number of visitors from
around the world jumped out after this city be approved as The World Heritage Site.
This fact certainly makes some changes for many sector, especially in economics.

This heritage site attract tourist to come, so it’s provide any direct jobs such as
a tour guides or in the indirect employment such as food production, resort area,
creative and retails industries, transportation services, and many more. That kind of
thing can increase the country’s income and revenue by the tourism activities. It can
be a good step for advance the state or even the civils economy.

The impact is also founded on the cultural side. With the many of people who
come in, it can’t be impossible that assimilation and acculturation will be occur there.
The people there will also automatically learning their culture for educate the tourist
and it will be good for the preservation of the culture itself.

But, as long as the development of the tourism activities, there is also bad
impact that can take a place. For example, the damages of this historic site due to the
irresponsible visitors which is would be very disserving. Moreover the environmental
damage and the natural fading of social values.

REFERENCES

Ongkhluap, Somyot. 2012. Tourism Impacts on the Ayutthaya World Heritage Site:
Measuring the Perceptions of the Host Community. Journal of International and Thai
Tourism Vol. 8 No. 1.

Center, World Heritage. Historic City of Ayutthaya. Accessed on 11th October, 2019
at Surakarta from https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/576/.