Now the cen­tral build­ing of the Nation­al Muse­um, the Front Palace used to be an enor­mous com­plex stretch­ing from the Chao Phraya Riv­er across Sanam Luang to Lot Canal. It was built in the 18th-cen­­tu­ry, along with the Grand Palace. The Front Palace housed the heir to the throne, who was appoint­ed by the King, usu­al­ly a son or broth­er of the reign­ing monarch who bare the title Sec­ond King or Vice-King. The title of Sec­ond King start­ed in the Ayut­thaya Peri­od, but gained a sig­nif­i­cant amount of pow­er dur­ing the Rat­tanakosin Peri­od when the Sec­ond King even got its own pri­vate army and navy. This large amount of pow­er often led to con­flicts between the King and the Sec­ond King. The last to bare the title of Sec­ond King was Prince Vichaichan. In 1884, he got into a pow­er strug­gle with King Rama V in an event known as the Front Palace cri­sis. King Rama V tried to mod­ernise Siam in a rapid pace, and con­ser­v­a­tive forces and the nobil­i­ty, includ­ing Prince Vichaichan, saw their pow­er and influ­ence being slow­ly erod­ed. When Prince Vichaichan got a let­ter threat­en­ing his life, he mobilised up to 600 of his pri­vate troops around his palace. The King also mobilised his troops, but this only under­lined that the Sec­ond King’s guards were more numer­ous and bet­ter equipped. After an explo­sion, a mys­te­ri­ous fire broke out in the Grand Palace, threat­en­ing Wat Phra Kaeo, and the Sec­ond King’s troops got on their way to the Grand Palace to try and extin­guish it, how­ev­er this was blocked by the King’s Roy­al Guards who feared that the fire was orches­trat­ed by the Sec­ond King to take over the coun­try. After­wards King Rama V crit­i­cised the Sec­ond King for not mov­ing all his troops to the Grand Palace, as an ancient cus­tom dic­tat­ed that the Sec­ond King’s troops must active­ly pro­tect the King and the Grand Palace in an emer­gency. King Rama V ordered his troops to sur­round the Front Palace, and Prince Vichaichan fled to the British embassy. After medi­a­tion, the pow­er­ful West­ern coun­tries sup­port­ed King Rama V, who abol­ished the title and intro­duced the West­­ern-style Crown Prince of Siam for the heir appar­ent. Prince Vichaichan died one year lat­er. The palace was turned into the Nation­al Muse­um’s main build­ing hous­ing Thai art objects. Some walled remains of the old Front Palace com­plex can be found inside the Tham­masat Uni­ver­si­ty com­plex.