The city of fine arts — the oldest of the Kathmandu Valley's three Durbar Squares, where Newari bronze casting, woodcarving, and stone temples have flourished for two thousand years
Patan (Lalitpur — 'City of Beauty') is a city of 300,000 immediately south of Kathmandu, separated by the Bagmati River, and one of the three ancient Newar kingdoms of the Kathmandu Valley. Its Durbar Square is the most architecturally refined of the valley's three royal squares — a dense concentration of Newari temples, courtyards, and the Royal Palace of the Malla kings — UNESCO-listed as part of Kathmandu Valley since 1979. Patan is also Nepal's traditional centre of metalwork and bronze casting: the workshops and retail galleries of Mahabouddha and Oku Bahal districts produce the thangka…
Patan is traditionally said to have been founded in 299 CE — making it one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in South Asia. The Licchavi dynasty ruled the Kathmandu Valley from the 4th–9th centuries and left inscriptions that document Patan's role as a Buddhist pilgrimage town; the four ashoka stupas marking the city's cardinal boundaries are attributed (legendarily) to the Mauryan emperor Ashoka's pilgrimage c. 250 BCE. The Malla dynasty ruled from the 12th–18th centuries and built most of the present Durbar Square — the temples of Vishwanath, Bhimsen, and the extraordinary Krishna…