IQ · Curated travel guide
Nineveh, Imam Ali Shrine, Larsa and 7 more — what each one is, and why it is worth the detour.
Chosen from everything Wikidata knows about Iraq and ranked by how many Wikipedia language editions describe them, which is about as close to "famous" as open data gets. One is on UNESCO's World Heritage list.
Ancient Assyrian city
An ancient city of Upper Mesopotamia, in the Near East, now within Mosul in northern Iraq, on the Tigris's east bank. It was the capital and biggest city of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, and possibly the richest city of the ancient world.
Photo: Photo by Fredarch., CC BY-SA 3.0
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Mosque and mausoleum of Ali
Also called the Mosque of Ali, the mausoleum in Najaf, Najaf Governorate, Iraq, of Ali: cousin and son-in-law of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, first Shia Imam and fourth Rashidun caliph.
Photo: U.S. Navy photo by Photographer's Mate 1st Class Arlo K. Abrahamson., Public domain
City-state in ancient Sumer
Called Larancha/Laranchon by Berossos and linked with the biblical Ellasar, an important city-state of ancient Sumer and centre of the cult of Utu, the sun god, whose temple was E-babbar. Its site, now the modern settlement of Tell as-Senkereh or Sankarah, lies in Iraq's Dhi Qar Governorate, some 25 km (16 mi) southeast of Uruk, close to the east bank of the Shatt-en-Nil canal.
Photo: SWmail, CC BY-SA 4.0
1960s–2014 prison in central Iraq
A former prison complex in Abu Ghraib, Iraq, 32 kilometers (20 mi) west of Baghdad. It became known worldwide first as the place where Saddam Hussein's government tortured dissidents and put them to death, and later for the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal, when photographs published in news media around the world revealed torture of Iraqi detainees by the United States military.
Photo: USDOJ Office of the Inspector General, Public domain
Early Bronze Age ziggurat in present-day Iraq
A Neo-Sumerian ziggurat in the former city of Ur, near Nasiriyah, in today's Dhi Qar Province, Iraq, built in the Early Bronze Age by King Ur-Nammu of Ur's Third Dynasty.
Photo: en:User:Hardnfast, CC BY 3.0
9th-century former mosque in Samarra, Iraq
Also called the Al-Malwiya Mosque, a former congregational mosque, now partly ruined, in Samarra, Iraq's Saladin Governorate. The Abbasid caliph Al-Mutawakkil commissioned it in 848 CE and completed it in 851.
Photo: IgorF, CC BY-SA 3.0
World Heritage
Citadel and archaeological settlement hill in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan
Locally called Qellat, a tell, or inhabited mound, forming the historic centre of Erbil, in Iraq's Kurdistan Region. It joined the World Heritage List on 21 June 2014.
Photo: jan kurdistani, CC BY-SA 2.0
Iraqi- Kurdish site of Neanderthal remains
An archaeological site on Bradost Mountain, in the Zagros Mountains, in Erbil Governorate of the Kurdistan Region of northern Iraq. Neanderthal remains were found there in 1953, among them Shanidar 1, who lived through several injuries, perhaps cared for by others of his group, and Shanidar 4, the famous supposed 'flower burial', where some have proposed that pollen found with the body comes from flowers placed there deliberately.
Photo: JosephV at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0
Eighth gate to the capital city of Babylon
The eighth gate of Babylon's inner city wall, built on the north side of the city c. 569 BC on the orders of King Nebuchadnezzar II.
Photo: Rictor Norton, CC BY 2.0
10th-century Shia mosque and mausoleum in Iraq
Also called the 'Askariyya Shrine or the Al-Askari Mosque, a holy site of Shia Islam in Samarra, Iraq's Saladin Governorate, holding the mausoleums of Ali al-Hadi and Ḥasan al- Askari, the tenth and eleventh Shia Imams.
Photo: Amir Hossein Nasooti, CC BY 4.0
Officially the Republic of Iraq, and historically known in the west as Mesopotamia, a West Asian country in the Middle East. Turkey lies to its north, Iran to its east, Kuwait and the Persian Gulf to its southeast, Saudi Arabia to its south, Jordan to its southwest and Syria to its west. Its 438,317 square kilometres (169,235 sq mi) rank 58th in the world, and its population of over 46 million 31st.
Officially The Republic of Iraq. Known locally as Al-'Iraq العراق.
Based on the Wikipedia article, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0: the facts are Wikipedia's, the wording is this site's.
This guide lists 10: Nineveh, Imam Ali Shrine, Larsa and Abu Ghraib prison and others. Citadel of Erbil is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
By machine, from open data, with no human ranking them and nobody able to pay for a place on the list. Everything Wikidata records in Iraq that is a building, a landform, a protected area or a tourist attraction, has coordinates, a photograph and an English Wikipedia article, is ranked by how many Wikipedia language editions wrote about it. Provinces, cities, airports, stations and stretches of sea shared with the neighbours are filtered out.
1 of the 10 in this guide: Citadel of Erbil. That is not the full count for Iraq, only the listed sites that made this guide.
Arabic, Kurdish. The currency is IQD.
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