Harappa
Type Site Of The Indus Valley Civilisation, Which Is Often Called The Harappan Civilisation After It; On Pakistan'S UNESCO Tentative List · Sahiwal, Punjab
Harappa gave its name to a whole civilisation. The Indus Valley civilisation is often called the Harappan civilisation because this was the first of its cities to be identified, and it was one of the largest, a city of mud-brick houses, granaries, workshops and cemeteries on the old course of the Ravi, flourishing around the same time as Mohenjo-daro. The story of what happened to it is painful. In the 1850s the engineers building the railway between Lahore and Multan used its bricks as ballast, carting away a great part of the ancient city before archaeologists understood what it was. Excavations from the 1920s onward uncovered what remained. Today visitors walk the mounds, see the granary and working platforms, the city gates and the cemetery, and a small museum shows seals, pottery, jewellery and toys. Harappa is less complete and less spectacular than Mohenjo-daro, but it is far easier to reach from Lahore and has no security issues to speak of. It is best as a winter day trip.
Harappa archaeological site, near Sahiwal, Sahiwal District, Sahiwal, Punjab, Pakistan
Open daily in daylight hours, with a ticket and a higher foreigners' rate; the museum may close one day a week, so confirm the closing day before driving out. Harappa is about three hours from Lahore by road via Sahiwal, or half an hour from Sahiwal itself. There is little shade on the mounds, so arrive at opening in the warm months and allow about two hours for the museum and the site.