Erbil Citadel

The citadel of Erbil, in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, is an oval mound rising high above the modern city, built up from the remains of thousands of years of settlement, each generation building on the debris of the last. Erbil is among the oldest continuously inhabited places in the world, and as Arbela it was a major city of Assyria, a centre of the worship of the goddess Ishtar. The citadel was inscribed by UNESCO in 2014.

Near Arbela in 331 BCE, at the battle often named after the nearby village of Gaugamela, Alexander of Macedon defeated the Achaemenid king Darius III, a turning point in the fall of the Persian empire.

What visitors see today on top of the mound is a dense town of courtyard houses, alleys and mosques, mostly from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries. The outer houses stand shoulder to shoulder along the edge, so that from below their facades form a continuous wall. The citadel's residents were moved out in 2007 for a long programme of restoration, and the old houses are gradually being repaired. A textile museum shows Kurdish weaving, and the main gate opens towards the city's large bazaar below, where the gold and textile markets bustle in the shadow of the mound.