Patan Durbar Square and the City of Metalworkers
The most architecturally dense square in the valley sits inside a city that still makes things with its hands.
Patan is the oldest of the valley three cities and, by common agreement among people who spend their lives looking at buildings, the finest. Its square is smaller than Kathmandu and considerably richer per square metre.
The Krishna Mandir
The stone temple in the northern half is the one everyone photographs, and it earns it: built in 1637, with scenes from the Mahabharata and Ramayana carved across every available surface.
It is a shikhara form, unusual here — most of the valley builds in pagoda — and it reads beautifully in the flat light before nine. The lowest step is the one to look at, not the top: most of the narrative carving is within knee height of the courtyard.
Go into the museum
The Patan Museum occupies the old palace wing on the east side of the square and is, by some distance, the best museum in Nepal. The building has been restored with unusual restraint, and the bronzes — many lost-wax cast in the courtyards you are about to walk into — are shown properly, with good light and almost no labelling noise.
The garden café inside is a reasonable place to sit out the middle of the day, and it is included in the ticket.
Patan Durbar Square, Nepal
Then walk south, into the workshops
From the square, walk south-east towards Sundhara and the lanes around the Golden Temple. This is where the city reputation lives. In the courtyards, families chase and repoussé metal by hand — statues, water vessels, temple finials — for export and for the valley own temples.
It is not a demonstration. It is a trade, and you are walking through somebody working day. Ask before photographing; the answer is often yes.
We do not make souvenirs. We make gods, and then sometimes they are sold as souvenirs.
The square takes two hours. The lanes behind it take the rest of the morning.
Practical
Patan is a fifteen-minute taxi ride from central Kathmandu and a shorter one from Boudhanath. It is the easiest of the three palace squares to see properly, and far less crowded than Kathmandu between eight and ten in the morning.
Enter from the north side, away from the main ticket queue. The lanes are at their best before the shops open.
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