Bangkok (Thai: Krung Thep) is the capital and largest city of Thailand, in the central part of the country, on the Chao Phraya River near the Gulf of Thailand (Siam).

Bangkok is Thailand’s administrative, economic, and cultural center, and a major commercial and transportation center of SouthEast Asia. The Thai refer to Bangkok as Krung Thep, which means City of Angels. Europeans once called the city the Venice of the East because it had numerous canals, most of which have now been filled and made into roads.

Both Bangkok and Thon Buri, an area on the West bank of the Chao Phraya, were just small villages in the 17th and 18th centuries, when they served as ports for ships sailing up the river to Ayutthaya, the former capital of Siam (then the name of Thailand).

As ships got larger and the river got shallower, the villages grew in importance, and the capital was moved to Thon Buri when Siam fell to Burmese armies in 1767. The capital was moved across the river to Bangkok in 1782, because the main Burmese military threat to the Thai came from the West, on the Thon Buri side of the river.

Because Bangkok was Siam’s primary port, it became a bustling commercial center, where traders and visitors came increasingly from all parts of the world. The city continued to grow in the 19th and 20th centuries, and in 1971, its boundaries were expanded to include Thon Buri.

The combined city, called Krung Thep Mahanakhon, or Bangkok Metropolis, extends for more than 32 km (more than 20 mi) in all directions and includes much of five neighboring provinces (Nakhon Pathom, Nonthaburi, Pathum Thani, Samut Prakan, and Samut Songkhram) to cover an area of 7,758 sq km (2,995 sq mi). The city, which is barely above sea level, is subject to frequent flooding.