From rubble to restoration
Two consecutive earthquakes shattered the glorious historic centre of Patan in 2015. It took seven years and hundreds of devoted craftsmen and women to bring it back to its original mission, to connect people. Claire Burkert and Thomas Kelly carefully portrayed those who made this miracle work. Their story reads like a book.
“I don’t view the aftermath of the earthquake in only negative ways—there are also positive outcomes,” reflects Rohit Ranjitkar. He is the director of the Kathmandu Valley Preservation Trust (KVPT), a not-for-profit organization that has worked on the Patan Durbar Square for three decades. Following the powerful 7.8 magnitude earthquake that struck Nepal in 2015, KVPT has been busy restoring most of the square’s valuable historic monuments.
I meet Rohit in a workshop where woodworkers are repairing old carved temple columns and windows. “What could be positive about the effects of an earthquake!” I exclaim.
“Before the first earthquake on April 25th, a lot of people did not value the heritage that they saw around them each day. When the temples collapsed, they suddenly had no place to worship. Hundreds of people came out to collect and protect the remnants of temples. They recognized their value. It is in this way that the earthquake brought intangible and tangible heritage together.”
Rohit introduces me to Ravi Darshandari, previously a tourist guide, who is now head of the square’s local development association. Immediately after the earthquake Ravi ran to the square to bring the toppled Yoganarendra statue, dating from 1683, into the Keshav Narayan Chowk palace for safety. Local people guarded the area for two nights and two days to keep statues and temple pieces safe from theft until the army and police arrived. “The earthquake brought people together,” Rohit tells me. “Their awakened understanding about the value of these monuments left an enduring message for the general public.”
Damage and despair
How well I remember the valley’s second major earthquake on May 12th, when my husband Thomas Schrom and I huddled with other staff members of the Kathmandu Valley Preservation Trust in the café of the Patan Museum. In the early 90s Thomas had been a member of the professional Austrian team who had transformed the Keshav Narayan Chowk into the world-renowned Patan Museum, which exhibits Buddhist and Hindu antiquities. The Patan Museum was like a home to us and the people who had worked on it, an extended family. We looked up to the tilting pinnacle of the northern Degutale temple, wondering what further other damage the Patan Durbar had suffered. The earthquakes’ toll on people, animals and architecture left us in despair.
Now, seven years later, I understand Rohit’s perspective. “After the earthquakes, we needed more craftsmen to restore the square,” he recounts. “In a week we had two hundred people that we could train on the job. We created our “royal workshop” in the back of the Museum where many people learned new skills. So, what I really want to remember what we were able to teach and learn.”
I will never forget seeing the Patan Museum courtyard packed with struts, columns and other precious carvings rescued from the Durbar square’s major temples. Putting them together again seemed like an impossible puzzle. Rohit began the daunting task with a group of youth who helped collect photos. It was easy to decide which carved struts belonged to which of the temples, but the location of other components was less clear. So, they sorted elements by size and type—for instance, all the carved wooden lion heads were grouped together. Rohit admits that not all the lions were replaced exactly where they’d been, adding wryly, “Maybe they are not happy thinking “I used to be in the east rather than the west” — but at least they are on their original level in the correct building.”
The backbone of conservation
In the 16th and 17th centuries, until the conquest by Gorkha rulers in 1767, Kathmandu valley’s three major cities, Patan, Kathmandu and Bhaktapur, were each under the rule of Malla kings. The palace compound (durbar) of each kingdom faced an open quadrangle on which a succession of religious kings erected a panoply of temples. Their temples and palaces mark a pinnacle in the artistic achievement of the valley’s Newar craftsmen. The Newars, the original settlers of the Kathmandu valley, are today still renowned for their crafts skills, and because of these living artisans it has been possible to rebuild in Nepal.
Whenever I visit the Patan Durbar Square, just a five-minute walk from my house, I am struck by the harmony of more than 30 different style monuments in a bricked space that measures (roughly) only 160 m by 70 m. In A.D. 1652 the poet Kunu Sharma wrote, “Isn’t it like a piece of heaven?” The widely travelled early 20th century writer Perceval Landon observed: “As an ensemble, the Durbar Square in Patan probably remains the most picturesque collection of buildings that has ever been set up in so small a space….”
It is only since the earthquake, observing the great monuments of the square reassembled to their original selves, that I have learned the names and individual identities of each temple. In fact, my curiosity in them has peaked as I watch the temples under repair by local builders and craftspeople of such skill. “You know, there is money for conservation, but if we don’t have artisans, what can we do?” says Ravi. “They are the backbone of conservation. And it is not just the work of individuals, but the work of the team.”
Restoration of several temples is still on-going, with new challenges since the pandemic, when national priorities shifted and building costs rose. Several completed monuments whose histories, shaped by the gifted artisans who recently restored them, are described here.
Char Narayana Temple
The original construction of this monument initiated in 1563. It is the square’s oldest majortemple (mandir) and honours Narayan (Vishnu). Built primarily of brick in the ‘pagoda’ style, it has two tiered roofs supported by carved struts. In Newar woodcarving, the struts surpass their functional purpose, as they are also artistic, protective, and divine. Twenty various forms of Vishnu are depicted on the struts that support the lower roof, while the struts of the upper roof are carved with images of female deities, the consorts of Vishnu. Nepal’s kings believed they were descended from Lord Rama and incarnated from Vishnu, hence there are many temples on the square dedicated to Vishnu’s various forms.
Char Narayana collapsed down to its plinth in the 2015 earthquake. Its original veneer bricks and carved elements were rescued and stacked neatly around the square within 2 days. Photo documentation helped in the remaking of five broken struts and other broken parts, so that the temple could be rebuilt almost as it was.
Wooden struts of valley temples of this era had up to 16 arms in different positions, oftenholding objects that made it clear the identity of the deity. Out of the rubble, 162 arms weresalvaged from the Char Narayana and nearby Harishankara temples. It was impossible to know how to put them back or to design new ones, so the struts were replaced on the temples in their proper cardinal directions, while 102 lost arms were displayed together in the Patan Museum in an exhibition dedicated to post-earthquake rescue and conservation efforts.
A family of woodcarvers
Shiva Chauguthi learned to make furniture as a boy in Bhaktapur, a city famous for itswoodworkers and carvers. Joining timber correctly, he tells me, is the hardest thing for acarpenter to learn. His eyes grow wide describing the challenges of working on the scaffolding erected on temple roofs, overseeing the labour who had to join huge pieces of timber according to precise measurements. It took months to find proper sizes of timber, with some pieces being 12 feet long and 11 x 14 inches wide. “When I was first recruited, I wondered, how can I do this?” he recounts. “But now I can show what I’ve done in my life. Two years ago, KVPT appointed me head carpenter!”