The ruins cover several square kilometres of low brick mounds in the Punjab plain, the remains of a city that flourished from roughly 2,600 to 1,900 BC and which gave its name to the entire Indus Valley Civilization. The standard route takes you across the raised western mound, the so-called citadel, and then down into the lower city where the residential quarters and workshops once stood. Walls of standardised baked brick still rise to head height in places, and you can trace the lines of the streets and drains that gave Harappa its reputation as one of the earliest planned cities anywhere.
Much of the site is unexcavated and much of what was excavated has been re-buried or weathered down — do not come expecting Karnak or Persepolis. What you get instead is the strange quiet of an enormous flat ruin, the cemetery on the southern edge, and the slow realisation that you are walking on a city that was already old when the pyramids were still being built. A local guide from the museum is worth the small fee; the layout is not self-explanatory.