# Gaddi Baithak - the only "Greco-Roman/Neoclassical" building in Nepal



## esotericNepalese (Jan 3, 2022)

So I noticed that not many in this community have looked into my home country, Nepal (please correct me if I'm wrong).

I did a quick Google search and, to my surprise, found one building in Nepal of the old, beautiful antiquitech style (that has been rebranded as neoclassical), by the name of Gaddi Baithak.




 


As you can see, the Wikipedia article for this building is a measly 2 lines long. And they claim that this beauty was built by one lone Nepalese king in 1908. As it happens, they gave this king a full Wikipedia article, complete with multiple sections. Shows you where their priorities are.

Before I started watching JonLevi, I may have been gullible enough to swallow the lie that this lone Nepalese king built such a masterpiece, but now it's beyond obvious that this is a lie - a lie with insultingly low effort put into it. They don't bother telling you how long it took the king to build it, nothing.


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## trismegistus (Jan 3, 2022)

Interestingly enough there is so little information on this building this thread actually appears in the first page of results on duckduckgo, and it is above the Wikipedia article.

Perhaps there is more information in the native language sites but English results are very limited, I ran across this issue when researching Cairo


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## dreamtime (Jan 4, 2022)

Restored Gaddi Baithak sparks controversy

_"Restoration of the Gaddi Baithak palace, one of the focal attractions of the Kathmandu Durbar Square Unesco World Heritage Site, has sparked a controversy over visible changes on its main façade."_​


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## esotericNepalese (Jan 14, 2022)

It turns out I was wrong. This was NOT the only piece of old world architecture to have existed in Nepal. There were also the so-called Rana palaces, apparently built by the Ranas (a ruling dynasty in Nepal who inhabited these "palaces"). Obviously this is BS.


That photo of Rani Mahal (third from the left) may be of interest to mudflood theorists. It looks like you have ruins near the palace that extend several floors beneath the ground. And in the 5th photo, you can see a building with a wide old-world style archway and a pediment on top. Maybe the width of that arch indicates that a large portion of the building is buried underneath?

This wiki page even says "black lentil paste" was one of the ingredients used in the cementing/plastering mixture, among other cooking ingredients like molasses. Nepalese eat a lot of lentils, but who knew it was also a good building material? And apparently "foreign-trained Newar architects" designed the buildings.


  
(From left to right: _black lentils, sometimes found as an ingredient in Greco-Roman concrete;
Nepal's *Newar people*, who built the Rana palaces with a bit of training in unnamed foreign countries, combined with a bit of elbow grease - or maybe some canola oil._)

It looks like there were lots of these old world buildings in Nepal at some point, as you can see from the black and white aerial photos. Most of these buildings were probably demolished long ago.

The Narayanhiti Palace (the old one, not the new one) was ordered to be demolished and replaced by King Mahendra. I wonder if these Nepalese royals were secretly taking orders from some outside, foreign party? The old Narayanhiti Palace also suffered damage during the 1934 Nepal–Bihar earthquake (not the only famous earthquake to have occurred in Nepal, which I'll talk about in a moment).

There was also the famous Nepalese royal massacre, which I have no doubt was just more drama that really had something to do with destroying more of the remaining old world buildings. Having this new lens of old world reset theories is really.. depressing.. But at least I know the truth now.

I vaguely remember my father talking about these royal palaces with admiration, but he was never one to question the narrative. It would've never occurred to him that these buildings stick out like a sore thumb in Nepal.

So about earthquakes.. Nepal also had an infamous earthquake in 2015, and in the wiki article I linked earlier about the Rana palaces, it says the remaining Rana palaces were destroyed in that earthquake. Of course they were. Given everything I've recently learned, the earthquake comes as no surprise. I wonder what kind of contradictory, nonsensical info we might find about this earthquake if we were to dig deeper. I do know that it definitely stirred up a lot of peoples' emotions. Who's gonna care about some building that houses rich monarchs when your whole family is in panic from a natural disaster?

And it turns out there's even more still. I found these photos by entering "kathmandu colonial" into a stock photo website.

(_Unnamed colonial building_, Kathmandu)

_(Garden of Dreams_, Kathmandu)

(_Old British Palace_, Kathmandu)

[Source: Kathmandu Colonial Photos - Free & Royalty-Free Stock Photos from Dreamstime]

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Oh and I almost forgot. *There's at least one church building in Nepal* that has some suspicious old world elements. The most notable one being the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Cathedral in Kathmandu. And apparently in May of 2009, there was a bombing that damaged this building. Of course there was, of course.
 
(Octagonal prisms are a core element of old-world structures. And who built that statue I wonder? Probably more Newars.)

  
(The church's interior. What need would a bunch of simple, Nepalese churchgoers have for such a grand, two story building that looks more like an old theatre or ballroom in London? All the world's a stage, ladies and gentlemen.)


(Here you have St. Ann's Catholic church in Nepal. Much smaller, and much more appropriate to the needs of a small group of people.)

(And here you have another Nepalese Church. Much more believable in terms of the architecture.)


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## iseidon (Jan 15, 2022)

Kathmandu. Ancient buildings that I found.

Google Maps






A building with character. Possibly stylized.
Google Maps




An interesting place where the stadium is located.
Quite often, large stadiums are located in interesting places. (Odessa, Yekaterinburg, Kazan, Kiev, Warsaw, Chicago, etc.)





Unfortunately, panoramas in Kathmandu are poorly developed. At least for now. Many streets without panoramas. That's why I couldn't find much. I took random places on the map, in a characteristic central area of the city.


Perhaps off topic, but in Dhaka (Bangladesh), I found quite a lot of antique small buildings. That area is presented as being built by the British Empire.

Остатки античной Дакки. | Iseydon | VK (rus, but pictures)

Исторический центр Дакки, с точки зрения структуры,.. | Iseydon | VK (rus, but pictures)


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## esotericNepalese (Jan 15, 2022)

That palace-like building is a great find @iseidon.

And speaking of stadiums: Dasharath Rangasala - Wikipedia (in Kathmandu)
Wiki says this stadium suffered from the famous 2015 earthquake (of course it did). Also there was a "disaster" there in 1988. Maybe this hints at how these things were never designed to be stadiums? Dunno.

I suspect Nepal was hit pretty hard by the history-destroying controllers. Then again, so was every corner of the planet.
Anglo-Nepalese War - Wikipedia (Or this was just a staged war.)

I wonder how long ago the borders between Nepal and countries like Bangladesh were invented.


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## iseidon (Jan 15, 2022)

esotericNepalese said:


> That palace-like building is a great find @iseidon.
> 
> And speaking of stadiums: Dasharath Rangasala - Wikipedia (in Kathmandu)
> Wiki says this stadium suffered from the famous 2015 earthquake (of course it did). Also there was a "disaster" there in 1988. Maybe this hints at how these things were never designed to be stadiums? Dunno.
> ...


My version (as far as in the modern world, the version may be mine) that the stadiums stand on the site of the former "forts", "kremlin" and other power plants. For some reason, these places cannot be overloaded, so stadiums, shopping centers, arboretums, hollow factory buildings, squares, etc. are often found in their place.


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