Wichayen House

Wichayen House, Ban Wichayen in Thai, is a walled group of roofless brick buildings a short walk north of King Narai’s Palace. It takes its name from Chao Phraya Wichayen, the title given to Constantine Phaulkon, the Greek adventurer who became King Narai’s chief minister. It is also called the residence of the royal ambassadors, because it was enlarged in the early 1680s to lodge the first French embassy to Siam, led by the Chevalier de Chaumont, which arrived in 1685.

The ruins blend Thai brickwork with European design: tall gables, rows of rectangular windows, and the shell of a Christian church with its bell tower, built for the Catholic Phaulkon and the French missionaries. Phaulkon’s own quarters were in the western part of the compound, with lodgings and reception rooms for the envoys alongside.

The site is quiet and takes about half an hour to explore. Macaques sometimes gather here, so keep food out of sight.

Phaulkon was born in 1647 on Cephalonia, then a Venetian island, and reached Siam as a merchant in 1675. His gift for languages carried him from court interpreter to head of the treasury and, from 1685, to chief minister. He converted to Catholicism, married Maria Guyomar de Pinha, a Catholic of Japanese and Portuguese descent, and championed the alliance with Louis XIV that brought French envoys, Jesuits and, in 1687, French troops to Siam. Many Siamese nobles saw the foreign garrison as a threat. As Narai lay ill in 1688 the general Phetracha took control of the court, and Phaulkon was arrested and executed in Lopburi on 5 June 1688. The house was abandoned soon afterwards.