The finest concentration of Newar architecture anywhere, across the river from Kathmandu.
Overview
Patan – Lalitpur, the city of beauty – has the best-preserved of the three royal squares, and by most accounts the most beautiful. The temples along its western edge are stone and brick rather than timber, and the palace courtyards behind them are extraordinarily fine.
The Patan Museum, in a restored palace wing, is the best museum in Nepal by a considerable margin and explains the iconography you will see everywhere else. Krishna Mandir, carved entirely from stone, stands opposite.
The lanes around the square are still full of metalworkers and stone carvers, which is how the square came to exist in the first place.