West of the modern city of Sukhothai, the old capital opens across a broad, carefully managed archaeological landscape. The historic park is centred on Mueang Kao, in Sukhothai Province, northern Thailand. The Tourism Authority of Thailand describes the park as about 12 kilometres from the newer city and covering roughly 70 square kilometres. Inside and beyond its old walls are temple remains, ponds, moats and traces of a planned urban environment. Visitors should distinguish this park from the larger UNESCO property, which also includes the historic towns of Si Satchanalai and Kamphaeng Phet.
Sukhothai was the political and administrative capital of the first Kingdom of Siam during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. UNESCO inscribed the three historic towns together in 1991, recognizing a formative period in Siamese, or Thai, architecture, art, writing and religion. The park is therefore not simply a collection of picturesque ruins. It preserves evidence of a capital, its surrounding settlements and the systems that supported daily life. The scale of the landscape becomes clearer when visitors look beyond the best-known temple and notice how monuments, water and roads relate to one another.