Place · royal palace square · Nepal
Kathmandu Durbar Square
Also known as Hanuman Dhoka, Kathmandu Durbar Square, Basantapur, Kasthamandap
The third of the valley's royal squares, with the Hanuman Dhoka palace, the Taleju temple, the Kasthamandap that gives the city its name, and the house of the Kumari, the living girl-goddess of the Newar tradition. Prithvi Narayan Shah took it in 1768 and made it Nepal's capital.
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 27.704, 85.307
Worth knowing
The Kasthamandap, said to have been built from the timber of a single tree, collapsed in the 2015 earthquake and has been rebuilt; excavation under it during the reconstruction found levels from the seventh century. The Kumari still receives the king's — now the president's — blessing each Indra Jatra.
Connections (3)
- Contemporary capital withBhaktapur Durbar Square
Kathmandu, Bhaktapur and Patan were three separate Malla kingdoms within ten kilometres of one another, competing by building: each square answers the others' temples, palaces and towers. Their rivalry is the reason the valley has three complete palace complexes instead of one, and their division is why Prithvi Narayan Shah was able to take all three between 1768 and 1769.
- Power passed toGorkha
Prithvi Narayan Shah took Kathmandu in September 1768 and Bhaktapur the following year, and moved his capital from Gorkha into the valley. The Newar cities kept their craft, their ritual calendar and their languages and lost their sovereignty, and the Kumari of Kathmandu began receiving the blessing of a Shah king instead of a Malla one — which she still does, from a president.
- CampaignNuwakot
Prithvi Narayan Shah took Nuwakot in 1744 and used it for twenty-five years to blockade the Trishuli route between the Malla cities and Tibet, then took Kathmandu in 1768. The unification of Nepal was begun by cutting the valley's trade rather than by assaulting its walls, and he died in the seven-storey palace at Nuwakot in 1775.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Kathmandu Durbar Square”. UNESCO World Heritage nomination file for the Kathmandu Valley; Mary Slusser, Nepal Mandala (1982).
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