Bhaktapur, also known as Bhadgaon, is situated in Kathmandu Valley in central Nepal. The Newars still call this city 'Khwopa'. The city is shaped like a conch-shell. Bhaktapur means "the city of devotees".

Stretched along a ridge above the sacred Hanumante River 14 km east of Kathmandu, Bhaktapur grew from a collection of villages strung along the old Tibet trade route. Bhaktapur began as a collection of farming villages, perhaps as early as the 3^rd century, when irrigation was first brought to the Valley's fields.

In the 12^th century King Ananda Deva of Banepa, a powerful mini-kingdom just outside the Valley rim, shifted his capital to Bhaktapur and built a royal palace in the city's western quarter. Bhaktapur was the capital of the Greater Malla Kingdom from the 12^th to the 15^th century, until the fragmentation of the Three Kingdoms era. It was King Yaksha Malla who heavily fortified his capital city in a bid to make it invulnerable. It was at that time that many of Bhaktapur’s greatest monuments were built by the then Malla rulers. But it was only in the early 18^th century that  this city took its present shape.

Yet, in the course of time, and owing to continual invasions by intruders and subsequent natural calamities, the forts crumbled, but the huge gateways and the colossal Dattatreya temple still bear testimony to the incredible achievement made in those regal days of the Newar Malla Kings.

In 1768, the city fell to Prithvi Narayan Shah. Bhaktapur's status diminished during the Shah Dynasty. Economic development focused on Kathmandu (present capital of Nepal): Bhaktapur remained an agricultural city.

Bhaktapur is adamantly rural at heart, an agricultural city. Over half of its residents are farmers, among the country's best. Pottery and weaving are its traditional industries.

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