Patan Durbar Square — square
Image by 10914001 from Pixabay

Patan Durbar Square

  • 2 min read
  • 27.673° N 85.326° E

Interesting facts

  • Tradition holds that King Siddhi Narsingh Malla saw Krishna and Radha standing before his palace one night and ordered the Krishna Mandir built on that very spot.
  • The Krishna Mandir carries 21 golden pinnacles, and its upper floors are dedicated to Shiva and to the Buddhist bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara.
  • A stone inscription dated 643 AD in Keshav Narayan Chowk shows the palace site mattered centuries before the Malla kings arrived.
  • Newars worship Bhimsen, hero of the Mahabharata, as a patron of trade, which is why his 1680 temple in the square is especially dear to merchants.
  • The Taleju temple, shrine of the Malla kings' personal goddess, was built in 1640 and rebuilt in 1667 after a fire.
  • In Mul Chowk the doorway to the Taleju shrine is flanked by the river goddesses Ganga, standing on a tortoise, and Jamuna, riding a mythical makara.
  • The Char Narayan Temple, traditionally dated to 1566, is among the oldest in the square; it was rebuilt after 2015 using its conserved original carvings.
  • The stone Chyasing Deval at the southern end takes its name from its unusual eight-sided plan, rare among the square's pagoda temples.
  • The entrance to the Vishwanath Temple of Shiva is guarded by a pair of stone elephants, and a sculpture of his bull Nandi stands on the far side.
  • British surgeon and artist Henry Ambrose Oldfield, attached to the Residency in Kathmandu, painted the square in 1855.

Why it is worth it

Patan, today officially Lalitpur, sits across the Bagmati River from Kathmandu and was for centuries a royal city in its own right, seat of Malla kings who filled their capital with temples. Its Durbar Square is the heart of that city: a long, open space where the old royal palace runs along one side and, facing it, a crowd of temples in brick, timber and stone stands so close together that their roofs seem to overlap. Most of what you see was built in the seventeenth century under kings such as Siddhi Narsingh Malla and his successors, and the square has been part of the Kathmandu Valley World Heritage site since 1979.

Look first at the Krishna Mandir, built in the seventeenth century under Siddhi Narsingh Malla. Unlike the pagoda roofs around it, it is a stone temple in the shikhara style, a cluster of small pavilions climbing to a central spire, and the friezes along its upper storeys narrate scenes from the Mahabharata and the Ramayana in tiny carved figures. Then compare the tiered Newar temples: the Bhimsen temple with its three gilded windows, the Vishwanath temple of Shiva with its carved roof struts, the five-storeyed Taleju temple of the royal goddess. Everywhere the craft is in the detail — latticed windows, struts carved with deities, bells and stone guardians.

The palace behind is arranged around courtyards called chowks. Keshav Narayan Chowk, entered through a gilded door that faces the Krishna Mandir, was restored with Austrian help in the 1990s and now holds the Patan Museum, opened in 1999 and admired for the way its galleries of Hindu and Buddhist sacred art sit within the old palace rooms. In Sundari Chowk lies the Tusha Hiti, the royal bath commissioned by Siddhi Narsingh Malla, a sunken stepped tank lined with carved stone deities. The April 2015 earthquake badly damaged the square; the Krishna Mandir was among the buildings hit and was restored by 2018, and the rebuilding of the damaged temples has become part of the square's story.

Getting there

The square lies in the centre of Patan (Lalitpur), a short ride south of central Kathmandu across the Bagmati. Tribhuvan International Airport (KTM), Nepal's main international airport, is only about 4 km away. The old streets and courtyards around the square are best explored on foot.

Plan your visit

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Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Bagmati Zone 7The Most Beautiful Places in Nepal 16The Most Beautiful Squares 25The Most Beautiful Squares, Streets and Monuments 173

From the encyclopaedia

Patan Durbar Square is situated at the centre of the city of Lalitpur in Nepal. It is one of the three Durbar Squares in the Kathmandu Valley, all of which are UNESCO World Heritage Sites. One of its attractions is the medieval royal palace where the Malla Kings of Lalitpur resided.

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