Patan Durbar Square

Royal Square Of The Old City Of Patan (Lalitpur); One Of Seven Monument Zones Of The Kathmandu Valley World Heritage Site · Lalitpur, Bagmati

Patan, also called Lalitpur, the City of Beauty, is the oldest of the three royal cities of the Kathmandu Valley and the home of its finest craftsmen, and its Durbar Square is for many visitors the most beautiful of the valley's three. The square is a dense gathering of temples in front of the old Malla palace: the stone Krishna Mandir of 1637, a rare shikhara-style temple carved with scenes from the Mahabharata and Ramayana, pagodas with carved roof struts, and the royal bath. The palace itself now holds the Patan Museum, restored with Austrian help and widely regarded as one of the best museums in South Asia, with a superb collection of bronze and a peaceful courtyard cafe. Around the square, lanes lead to the Golden Temple, a Buddhist monastery full of gilded metalwork, to Mahabouddha, the temple of a thousand Buddhas, and to workshops where bronze statues are still cast by the lost-wax method. Patan was damaged in 2015 and carefully repaired. It is calmer than Kathmandu, a short ride across the river, and its Rato Machhindranath chariot festival is one of the longest in Nepal.

Patan (Lalitpur) old town, south of Kathmandu across the Bagmati, Lalitpur, Bagmati, Nepal

The square is open at all times; foreigners pay an entry fee that includes the Patan Museum, which keeps daytime hours. Patan is about fifteen to thirty minutes by taxi from Thamel. The Rato Machhindranath festival runs for weeks in spring, with dates set by the lunar calendar.

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