Dynastic History|Patan Museum — A Malla Courtyard's Second Job

Keshav Narayan Chowk is one of the residential courts of the palace the Malla kings of Lalitpur kept on Patan Durbar Square. The building's present appearance dates from 1734. The earthquake of 1934 razed its eastern range, and for a period afterwards part of the palace held a public school.

Restoration was proposed by the Austrian architectural historian Eduard Sekler, and in 1982 the Austrian and Nepalese governments launched a joint project on the courtyard, with Austria providing the funds. From 1985 the work was headed by the architect Gotz Hagmuller; the collection was curated by Mary Shepherd Slusser. Fifteen years later, in 1997, the Patan Museum opened, inaugurated by King Birendra — a Shah, of the house that had taken the valley from the Mallas two centuries before.

What it holds is worth naming precisely. Roughly fifteen hundred objects were already in the palace, described in an account carried on the museum's own website as largely stolen pieces that had been recovered and stored by the authorities; some two hundred were selected for display across nine galleries. The square outside was heavily damaged again in April 2015. In 2017 the restored Sundari Chowk was added to the museum, taking in the Tusha Hiti, the sunken royal bath commissioned by Siddhi Narasimha Malla, who ruled from 1619 to 1661.

Nepal abolished the monarchy in 2008. The palace is a government museum under the culture ministry, and the ticket desk is inside the gate.

📸 Cover: the Patan Museum facade on Patan Durbar Square — the Keshav Narayan Chowk range, Bijay Chaurasia, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons