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History
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People must have occupied what is now Kathmandu for thousands of years, but chroniclers attribute the city's founding to Gunakama Deva, who reigned in the early eighth century - by which time sophisticated urban centres had already been established by the
Lichhavi
kings at Pashupatinath and other sites in the surrounding valley. Kathmandu was originally known as Kantipur, but it later took its present name from the Kasthamandap ("Pavilion of Wood") that was constructed as a rest house along the main Tibet-India trade route in the late twelfth century, and which still stands in the city centre.
The city rose to prominence under the Malla kings, who took control of the valley in the thirteenth century and ushered in a golden age of art and architecture that lasted more than five hundred years. All of Kathmandu's finest buildings and monuments, including those of its spectacular Durbar Square, date from this period. At the start of the Malla era, Kathmandu ranked as a sovereign state alongside the valley's other two major cities, Bhaktapur and Patan, but soon fell under the rule of Bhaktapur. The cities were again divided in the fifteenth century, and a long period of intrigue and rivalry followed.
Malla rule ended abruptly in 1769, when Prithvi Narayan Shah of Gorkha, a previously undistinguished hill state to the west, captured the valley as the first conquest in his historic unification of Nepal. Kathmandu fared well in defeat, being made capital of the new nation and seat of the new
Shah
dynasty. The Shahs rule to this day, although from 1846 to 1951 they were politically outmanoeuvred by the powerful
Rana
family, who ruled as hereditary prime ministers and left Kathmandu with a legacy of enormous white (now mouldy grey) Neoclassical palaces. The capital remains the focus of all national political power - the 1990 democracy movement led, inevitably, to the palace gate - while its industrial and financial activities continue to fuel a round-the-clock building boom. Other useful information
for tourists (each section contains more specific sub-sections): |
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Nepal,
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