The Most Beautiful Places in Iraq
7 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Iraq are Imam Husayn Mausoleum, Ziggurat of Ur and Great Mosque of Samarra. The list covers 7 places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Iraq occupies most of ancient Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and the Euphrates where cities, writing and monumental architecture first appeared. Its builders had little stone and no timber to speak of, so they worked in mud brick and fired brick, raising stepped temple platforms, vast vaults and spiral minarets. Over five thousand years the same plains passed from Sumerians and Babylonians to Parthians, Sasanians and the Abbasid caliphs, and later became the heart of Shia pilgrimage, which is why ancient ruins and living shrines stand in the same landscape.
The Ziggurat of Ur, built for the moon god Nanna around the 21st century BC, is the best preserved of the Sumerian stepped temples. At Ctesiphon, the Taq Kasra is the surviving arch of a Sasanian palace, one of the largest brick vaults ever built without reinforcement. Hatra, a fortified city of the Parthian period, mixes Greek, Roman and Arab forms in its temples and withstood sieges by Roman emperors.
The Islamic centuries brought new shapes. The Great Mosque of Samarra, built by the Abbasids in the 9th century, is known for the Malwiya, a minaret wound with an external spiral ramp. In Najaf and Karbala, the golden domes of the Imam Ali Shrine and the Imam Husayn Shrine rise over two of the holiest cities of Shia Islam. In Baghdad, the Al-Shaheed Monument splits a turquoise dome into two halves around an eternal flame.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Imam Husayn Mausoleum | Mosque | |
| 2 | Ziggurat of Ur | Temple | |
| 3 | Great Mosque of Samarra | Mosque | ✓ |
| 4 | Taq Kasra (Arch of Ctesiphon) | Palace | |
| 5 | Hatra | Archaeological site | ✓ |
| 6 | Imam Ali Shrine | Mosque | |
| 7 | Al-Shaheed Monument | War memorial |
01 Imam Husayn Mausoleum
Iraq · 0.8 km from Karbala32.616° N 44.032° E
User:HerbertReichart germany · Public domain A golden dome over the grave of Husayn ibn Ali stands at the heart of Karbala in central Iraq, and every year it draws one of the largest religious gatherings on earth.
Did you know? The shrine is entered through ten gates, and its golden dome is ringed by twelve windows.
02 Ziggurat of Ur
Iraq · 18.1 km from Nasiriya30.962° N 46.102° E
Image by blueMix from Pixabay The Ziggurat of Ur is the best-preserved temple tower of ancient Mesopotamia apart from Chogha Zanbil in Iran: a stepped mass of brick rising from the flat plain of southern Iraq, more than four thousand years old. Its Sumerian name, Etemenniguru, is usually translated as "house whose foundation creates terror".
Did you know? To bind the solid mass together, layers of reed matting soaked in bitumen were laid between the brick courses at regular intervals.
03 Great Mosque of Samarra
Iraq · 1.4 km from Samarra34.206° N 43.880° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Chris Hoare · CC BY 2.0 In the 9th century the Abbasid caliphs left Baghdad and built a new capital upstream on the east bank of the Tigris. Samarra was founded by al-Mu'tasim in 836 and remained the seat of the caliphate until 892, and in those few decades it filled with palaces and mosques.
Did you know? The walls were once lined with mosaics of dark blue glass, fragments of which archaeologists have recovered.
04 Taq Kasra (Arch of Ctesiphon)
Iraq · 32.5 km from Baghdad33.094° N 44.581° E
Safa.daneshvar · CC BY-SA 4.0 Taq Kasra, the great arch of Ctesiphon, is the last standing hall of the Sasanian kings of Persia and one of the boldest feats of brick building from the ancient world.
Did you know? The arch follows a catenary curve, the shape of a hanging chain turned upside down, and was raised without any wooden centring.
05 Hatra
Iraq35.588° N 42.718° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Lance Cpl. Albert F. Hunt, U.S. Marine Corps · Public domain On the open steppe of northern Mesopotamia, the vaulted halls and columned temple fronts of Hatra still rise out of a ring of ancient walls. Some 1,800 years ago this was a fortified caravan city on the frontier between Rome and Parthia, and its ruins are regarded as the richest site of the Parthian era known today.
Did you know? Hatra may have been the first Arab-ruled kingdom in a chain of largely Arab-controlled cities that ran through Palmyra and Baalbek to Petra.
06 Imam Ali Shrine
Iraq · 2.1 km from Najaf31.996° N 44.314° E
AHK AV · CC0 In the Iraqi city of Najaf, a golden dome and two golden minarets rise above the rooftops. Beneath it lies Ali ibn Abi Talib, cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, the fourth caliph and, for Shia Muslims, the first Imam.
Did you know? The clock above the main gate was made in Manchester, England, and installed in 1887.
07 Al-Shaheed Monument
Iraq · 5 km from Baghdad33.343° N 44.446° E
Mohmmd Abd · CC0 On the east bank of the Tigris in Baghdad, two halves of a vast turquoise dome stand apart, as if a single shell had been split open from top to bottom. Between them an eternal flame burns beneath a twisted metal flagpole carrying the Iraqi flag.
Did you know? Ismail Fatah Al Turk was born in Basra, studied painting and sculpture in Baghdad, and earned a master's degree at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in Iraq?
- On our list, Imam Husayn Mausoleum ranks first, followed by Ziggurat of Ur and Great Mosque of Samarra.
- What is a ziggurat?
- A ziggurat is a massive stepped platform of mud brick built in ancient Mesopotamia, with a temple on its summit. The Ziggurat of Ur was built by King Ur-Nammu in the 21st century BC and dedicated to the moon god Nanna.
- What is the Malwiya minaret?
- The Malwiya is the spiral minaret of the Great Mosque of Samarra, built under the Abbasid caliph al-Mutawakkil in the 9th century. A ramp winds around the outside of its conical tower to the top, and at the time the mosque was one of the largest in the world.
- How old is the Arch of Ctesiphon?
- The Taq Kasra is the remaining part of a Sasanian royal palace at Ctesiphon, usually dated to the 6th century and the reign of Khosrow I, though some scholars place it earlier. Its great vault of fired brick spans about 25 metres.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Iraq?
- In our collection, the places in Iraq are most often mosques (3), temples (1), palaces (1) and war memorials (1).
- How many places are on this list in Iraq?
- The list covers 7 places.