Describe the layout of harappan city

An Indus city was made of mud-brick buildings. It had walls and roads. Water was very important to Indus people, so the builders started by diggingwells, and layingdrains. Main streets were up to 10 metres wide, wide enough for carts to pass. Side streets were narrow, more like alleys.

Some cities had acitadelhigh on a mound. In the citadel were bigger buildings. Perhaps the city's rulers lived there. Most people lived and worked in the lower part of town.

Most Indus people did not live in cities at all. Perhaps 9 out of 10 people were farmers and traders who lived in small villages.

Indus Valley cities were neatly planned. They had straight roads making a grid pattern, dividing the city into blocks. Main streets were almost 10 metres wide, so two bullock carts could pass by each other. Drains were laid along the streets and wells were dug for water.

Mohenjo-Daro stood on a mound and had a wall with gateways to go in and out. Some city districts inside were raised on mounds too. On the highest mound was a citadel, which was perhaps where priests and rulers lived.

People built new houses on top of old ones, as the mud-bricks crumbled. So, over hundreds of years the cities grew higher. In time some new houses were seven metres above the level of the old houses at the bottom!The Great Bath in the city of Mohenjo-Daro looks like a swimming pool. It was over 14 metres long and seven metres wide. It had a brick-paved courtyard and columns on three sides.

Water (probably from a well) filled the Bath to about 2.4 metres deep (a tall man is about 1.8 metres). Two sets of steps led down to the bottom. Water drained out through one corner into a drain. Tar and gypsum mortar between the bricks made sure no water leaked out.

Water was very important to the Indus Valley people. The Great Bath may have been a temple, where priests and rulers bathed in religious ceremonies.

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The basic lay­out of large Harappan cities and towns shows a regular orientation. One finds the streets" and lanes lay out according to a set plan: the main streets running from north to south and the cross-streets and lanes running at right angles to them.Streets varied from 9 feet to 34 feet in width and ran straight sometimes as far as half a mile. They intersected at right angles dividing the city into square or rectangular blocks. Inside this square or oblong, the area is intersected by a number of narrow lanes crowded with houses.Important Harappan cities, such as Mohenjodaro, Harappa, Kalibangan, Dholavira and Surkotada, were divided into two parts - a fortified settlement on the high mounds designated as 'citadels' and the main residential areas to the west of it called 'lower town'.Harappa was regarded as another capital of the Indus Empire. Here to the north of the citadel, lay the workmen's quarter, their working platform, and a granary; the entire complex suggesting a high degree of regimentation of their population.Here the roads are neither always straight nor do they necessarily cut each other at right angles and systematic drainage is the exception than the rule. Lastly, the general subdivision of a metropolitan or urban township into two distinctly separate walled establishments does not hold good at Banawali.

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