Phu Phrabat Historical Park in Udon Thani, famed for its distinctive natural and cultural attributes, is expected to be named a world heritage site at a Unesco meeting in India later this month, according to the Office of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy and Planning (ONEP).
Confirmation of the decision would mark the second consecutive year in which a site from Thailand has obtained world heritage status. Last year the Ancient Town of Si Thep and its associated Dvaravati monuments in Phetchabun gained the distinction.
The official announcement about Phu Phrabat is expected on July 27 or 28, during a World Heritage Committee meeting taking place from July 21 to 31 in New Delhi.
“The minister of natural resources and environment and the minister of culture will witness the event at the National Museum in Bangkok on that day, marking the country’s eighth world heritage site,” said Prasert Sirinapaporn, the ONEP secretary-general. “A message from the prime minister will be forwarded to the Unesco world heritage committee to thank it for addressing the country’s cultural value,”
Phu Phrabat Historical Park and the associated Sima territory contain rich evidence of religious belief from the earliest Buddhist Dhavaravadi civilisation as well as successive Hindu, Khmer and Buddhist Lanchang cultures.
“The site is the landscape of a wooded sandstone hill adorned with patches of huge bare rocks in spectacular overhanging positions, some balanced on pedestals of oddity,” Unesco says of Phu Phrabat. “This scenic and awesome beauty of nature has had, over the millennia since prehistoric times, a compelling spiritual effect on humans in the neighbourhood to associate the site with sanctity, as evidenced by the presence of visual arts of different cultural periods.”
The ONEP now expects Songkhla and associated communities on Songkhla Lake will be put on Unesco’s tentative list, with promotion to world heritage status possible within a year or more.