A Secret Agent In Bangkok

Six wooden huts stand in the heart of the Thai capital. Tracked down in the 1950s and 1960s by Jim Thompson on his travels, they were dismantled and constructed to try and preserve what was being lost.

- Cecilia Fumagalli

In 1945, a 40-year old American arrives in Bangkok: he is James Harrison Wilson Thompson, charged by the Office of Strategic Services (predecessor of the modern CIA) to coordinate the activities for the liberation of Thailand from the Japanese occupation. At the end of the War, Thompson decides to move to the Thai capital, where he starts a flourishing activity linked to the production of silk, helping to revitalise one of the most important industries in Thailand.

Trained as an architect (Thompson studied architecture at Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania, although he never graduated) and a renowned antique collector, in 1958 he decides to combine his two passions and build what we know today as the Jim Thompson House.