In the smaller squares, women wearing the distinctive Newari dress -- black saris edged with red bands -- were spreading newly harvested grain on mats to dry. Potters' Square, lined with sheds where potters worked at their wheels, was filled with terra-cotta ware drying in the sun.

The most famous of all Newari windows, a fantailed peacock emerging from a delicate web of latticed wood, is at Pujari-math, a former Hindu monastery just off Dattatreya Square, the oldest of Bhaktapur's three grand squares. Dattatreya is the woodcarvers' center; studios are full of handsome carvings and the best of the colorful marionettes sold all over the valley. The Woodcarving Museum is in Pujari-math, opposite a Brass and Bronze Museum.

We finished the first day of our tour by driving to Changu, a small Newari agricultural village barely altered by tourism and the 20th century, on a steep ridge about four miles north of Bhaktapur. Its temple, Changu Narayan, occupies the center of an arcaded courtyard containing stone sculptures dating from the earliest Newar dynasty, the Licchavi period (A.D. 300-879). Its famous images of Narayan, one of the manifestations of Vishnu, have a serene but elemental force.

The next morning we drove to Patan (also known as Lalitpur), about 20 minutes from the center of Katmandu. It is now virtually part of Katmandu, separated only by the Bagmati River. Its Durbar Square, packed with an almost bewildering collection of temples, is the heart of the city's everyday life, with women washing clothes in an old carved water tank at one end and vegetable sellers at another. The palace and its courtyards are laden with treasure -- sculpture, dazzlingly intricate windows, and roof struts carved into magnificent figures. Other superb temples are found along Patan's back streets.

In the afternoon we visited Katmandu's Durbar Square, linked to other squares that wrap around the old royal palace. It is a thicket of temples, and pulses with life and color. People sit on temple steps selling oranges, lentils and spices, chatting with friends and giving haircuts. Porters march through the square with bales of hay and bolts of cloth; taxis, rickshaws, and bicycles loaded with bananas weave through the crowds.

Here is Kumari Bahal, home of Nepal's living goddess, the Kumari Devi, a young Newari girl considered to be the incarnation of Taleju, the special goddess of the kings of Nepal. A Kumari is selected when she is about 4 or 5, and replaced at puberty by another child. Visitors may enter the gate, guarded by stone lions, and view the courtyard, with its exquisitely carved windows and balconies. Mr. Deep gained us a glimpse of the Devi on condition that we not photograph her: a young girl in a red sari, her hair piled above her head, her eyes outlined in black, her expression masklike.

The vigor and astonishing variety of the religious imagination are boldly manifested in the square, and every major style of Newari architecture is present. Along with temples dedicated to deities more familiar to Western visitors, such as Shiva, Vishnu and Krishna, there are ferocious images of the fanged, grimacing Bhairab, demonic in appearance but a powerful defender of the faith. A splendid 17th-century palace facade of rose-colored brick with elegantly carved windows and roof struts, a royal display of Newari virtuosity, contrasts with the Kast hamandap (Sanskrit for Wooden Pavilion), the massive, foursquare 12th-century wooden structure that gave the capital city its name.