Current Time in Pātan, Nepal

Pātan, officially known as Lalitpur, lies in the Kathmandu Valley in central Nepal, on the southern bank of the Bagmati River directly across from Kathmandu itself. The valley sits at around thirteen hundred metres, ringed by green hills, and on clear mornings the snow peaks of the Himalaya appear above them to the north. The climate is temperate, with warm monsoon summers, crisp autumns famous for their clear skies and cool, dry winters.

Roughly three hundred thousand people live in the city, which although now joined to Kathmandu by continuous urban growth retains a very distinct identity. Its name Lalitpur means city of beauty, and it is widely considered the artistic capital of Nepal, home to generations of Newar craftsmen whose metalwork, wood carving and stone sculpture have adorned temples across the Himalaya for more than a thousand years.

The city is ancient. Four stupas said to have been raised in the time of the emperor Ashoka stand at the cardinal points of the old town, and inscriptions record urban life here from the fifth century. Pātan reached its height under the Malla kings, when the valley was divided into three rival kingdoms whose competition in temple building produced an extraordinary concentration of monuments. That rivalry ended in the eighteenth century when the Gorkha ruler Prithvi Narayan Shah conquered the valley and unified Nepal.

The heart of the city is Patan Durbar Square, a World Heritage site and one of the finest architectural ensembles in Asia. The former royal palace, with its gilded doorway, sunken bath and courtyards, faces a row of temples across a paved plaza, including the Krishna Mandir, an unusual stone shikhara temple of twenty one golden pinnacles carved with scenes from the Hindu epics. The Patan Museum, housed in a restored palace wing, is widely admired as one of the best museums in South Asia, explaining the meaning of Hindu and Buddhist images with unusual clarity.

Beyond the square lie treasures reached through narrow lanes. The Golden Temple, a Buddhist monastery of gilded metal and carved struts where turtles wander the courtyard, and the Mahabouddha temple, its walls covered with thousands of terracotta Buddha images, are among the most memorable. Bahals, the traditional monastic courtyards of the Newar Buddhist community, open unexpectedly off the streets, and workshops in the Jawalakhel and Oku Bahal districts still cast bronze images by the lost wax method and paint thangkas by hand.

The chariot festival of Rato Machhindranath, in which an enormous wheeled tower is hauled through the streets over weeks, is the greatest local celebration. A serious earthquake in 2015 damaged many monuments, and painstaking restoration has since returned most of them to their former state.

Buses, taxis and a growing network of roads connect the city to Kathmandu and the international airport, and the district hosts hospitals, universities and many international organisations.

Pātan is essential for anyone interested in Himalayan art, religion and the living traditions of the Newar people.