NEPAL HERITAGE DOCUMENTATION PROJECT is supported by the Arcadia Fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin and provides an open access approach to extensive heritage documentation in Nepal. The project itself straddles Germany and Nepal. In Germany, the NHDP is run collaboratively by the Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies (HCTS) and the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (HAdW). The project’s key partners and representatives in Nepal include the Department of Archaeology of the Government of Nepal and the Saraf Foundation of Himalayan Traditions and Culture.
Heritage Focus Areas and Heritage Walks
Heritage focus areas
Alongside our attempts to cover the old Royal City of Patan, we have defined certain ‘clusters’ of monuments that are characterised by a certain historical, social or ritual importance and connectivity. We call them “Heritage Focus Areas”. You will be able to see monuments in relation, and enter each one in the database. It is important to point out that the ‘borders’ of these clusters have been defined on the basis of these criteria, and do not represent any existing administrative or planned boundaries.
Heritage walks
Join us for a heritage walk! Besides documenting individual sites, NHDP also records how the sites are connected to rituals and other forms of religious and secular practices. This kind of documentation keeps cultural heritage alive. While connecting heritage sites through the heritage walks, we are able to present you with thematic approaches that enable a different understanding of the rich and dynamic heritage in and of Nepal.
The combination of data from DANAM, mappings, satellite images and detailed descriptions permits a virtual discovery of the selected cultural rituals, spaces and locations. Allowing to locate yourself in the map on your mobile device, the walks can be retraced and information on monuments and rituals can be queried on-site.
