Kiratpur was founded in 1626 on land at the foot of the Shivaliks given by Raja Tara Chand of Kahlur. Baba Gurditta Ji, eldest son of Guru Hargobind Sahib Ji, laid it out. Guru Hargobind Sahib Ji spent his last years there and died there in 1644.
Guru Har Rai Ji held the guruship from Kiratpur for seventeen years. Guru Har Krishan Ji was born there in 1656. Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji came to Kiratpur in 1664 and bought land a few kilometres north, at the village of Makhowal, where Anandpur was founded the following year.
Patalpuri at Kiratpur is where Sikh families from a wide area bring ashes after cremation to put into the Sutlej. The practice is old enough that Kiratpur functions in Punjabi speech as a place name meaning the end of a life rather than a town with a market and a bus stand, which it also is.
Three of the ten Gurus were connected to Kiratpur in the space of forty years and the town holds no fort, no battlefield and no siege. It was a working seat, not a stronghold, and the shift to Anandpur was among other things a shift to defensible ground.
The town was founded by Baba Gurditta Ji under Guru Hargobind Sahib Ji, and Guru Hargobind Sahib Ji, Guru Har Rai Ji and Guru Har Krishan Ji are all connected with it.
The ashes of Sikhs from across Punjab are brought to the Sutlej at Kiratpur, at Patalpuri, and the practice is continuous and daily.
Anandpur is a few kilometres upstream. The two towns are the beginning and the end of the Sikh geography of that stretch of river and they are usually visited as one journey.