Chiang Mai holds 700 years of Lanna craft alongside Thailand's sharpest contemporary art scene. Three days take you from stucco devas at Wat Chet Yot to Apichatpong video at MAIIAM, studio villages, folklife museums and riverside trading quarters.
The seven-spired chedi copies India's Mahabodhi temple, built in 1455 for King Tilokkarat and host of the 1477 Eighth World Buddhist Council. Stucco deva reliefs on the outer walls are Lanna's finest surviving sculpture.
Around twenty timber studios behind Wat Ram Poeng where ceramicists, printmakers, weavers and puppet-makers sell from their own workbenches. Open 10:00–18:00, closed Monday; a small courtyard cafe serves northern-style set plates.
Thailand's leading private contemporary museum: a converted warehouse clad in mirrored mosaic holding the Bunnag-Beurdeley collection — Apichatpong Weerasethakul video, Navin Rawanchaikul, Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook. 10:00–18:00, closed Tuesday.
The 16th-century Wualai temple whose ordination hall was re-skinned in hand-beaten aluminium and silver repoussé by neighbourhood silversmiths — panels mix Jataka scenes with an engraved solar system and elephants.
Nine galleries trace the Lanna kingdom from Hariphunchai stone Buddhas through Burmese-period lacquer to the teak trade, including the carved throne of the last Chiang Mai prince. Open 09:00–16:00, closed Monday and Tuesday.
A 1935 provincial court building rebuilt as full-scale dioramas of Lanna life: mural painting technique, talapat monk-fan making, lacquerware, betel sets, backstrap looms and the construction of a funeral tower.
The university's exhibition hall and base of the 1990s Chiang Mai Social Installation movement, showing thesis exhibitions and Thai conceptual artists across raw concrete galleries. Open 09:00–17:00, closed Monday.
Dinner arrives on a lacquered khantoke tray — hang lay pork curry, nam prik ong, sticky rice — while a piphat orchestra accompanies the fon leb fingernail dance, sword dance and Karen, Hmong and Akha performances.
Nine kilometres east on Route 1006, Bo Sang has painted sa mulberry-paper umbrellas since the 19th century. At the Umbrella Making Centre you watch bamboo ribs split and lashed, paper glued wet, then freehand flower painting.
The city's 1910 covered market beside the Ping: upstairs sells hill-tribe textiles, monk robes and Lanna drums, downstairs sai ua sausage, nam prik num and mieng kham. Chinese-Thai shrines fill the lanes behind toward Ton Lamyai.
Across the Ping in the old trading quarter, a temple founded in 1428 whose wooden hall holds a hoard-museum of palm-leaf manuscripts, Chinese porcelain, teak-trade ledgers and photographs assembled by residents themselves.
Whitewashed royal chedis holding the ashes of Chiang Mai's ruling dynasty glow against the Doi Suthep ridge at dusk. Founded in 1370 in the king's flower garden, with a Buddhist university on the same grounds.