Place · palace-city ensemble · Nepal
Patan Durbar Square
The Newar palace-city at Patan Durbar Square in Lalitpur district, Nepal, 5 kilometres south of Kathmandu — the former royal capital of the Patan Malla kingdom (1620-1769) under the Patan Malla dynasty. The 17-century palace complex includes the Krishna Mandir (1637, built by King Siddhi Narasimha Malla, the only stone shikhara temple in Nepal), the Taleju Bhawani Temple (1640), the Mul Chowk royal courtyard, the Patan Museum (opened 1997 in the former royal palace), and the Keshav Narayan Chowk. The 2015 Nepal earthquake damaged several structures (Char Narayan Temple collapsed completely); UNESCO-coordinated restoration is largely complete. The city's Newar metalworking tradition (Patan is still the chief centre for bronze and copper repoussé work in Nepal) makes the city itself an active craft network. UNESCO 1979.
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Tradition
- Newar urban history
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 27.673, 85.325
Connections (2)
- Craft tradition ofNewar lost-wax and repoussé metalwork, Patan
Patan's metalworking courtyards are the source of the Himalayan gilt-copper image. The Sakya and Vajracharya families have cast and beaten for Tibetan and Newar patrons for a thousand years, and Aniko, a Newar artist from these lanes, went to the Yuan court in the thirteenth century, became head of imperial artisans in Beijing and is credited with the White Stupa there.
- Route adjacencyPokhara & Phewa Lake
Pokhara and the Kathmandu Valley are the two anchors of modern Nepal, with the 200-kilometre Prithvi Highway between them following the Trisuli-Marsyandi valley system — the same route the Shah dynasty's armies used descending from Gorkha to take Kathmandu in 1768. Pokhara's trans-Himalayan trade position gave it an older economic logic (Thakali and Manangi caravans to Tibet) that Kathmandu's Newar urban logic complemented. The 1960s road made them the twin poles of modern Nepali geography.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Patan Durbar Square”. Archaeological Survey of India and State Archaeology monument records, and the standard regional literature.
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