Baghdad Things to Do

Walking along this street you will see this monument called the Unknown Soldiers Monument.
It's one of the oldest monuments in the city dedicated in 1959 soon after the July Revolution of 1958.
The monument became the memorial of those who fell in defense of the country's dignity and pride.

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Traveling north of Baghdad you can visit the Spiral Minaret of the Great Mosque in Samarra.
This dominating magnificent structure is very impressive.
The minaret is called Malwiya ("Spiral").
It rises to a height of 52 meters.
You can climb the stairs together with your hosts and enjoy the wonderful view.

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Visiting Al-Tahrir Square you will have no difficulty in taking a taxi for you will recognize it by its colors: red-white-red Soviet-made "Volga"s - at least when I was there...
There is Saadun Monument at the place where Saadun Street connects with that square.
Abdel Mohsen AsSaadoun was a great Iraqi national poet who fought against the British occupation with all his means.
They say the monument was built with people's donations in the fifties, which was quite special at that time.

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If you have the time, security, and opportunity, I would recommend a road trip to Babylon (near the city of Hilla)... I made a trip down there in October 2003 and saw Saddam's big palace, the rebuilt ruins of the city of Babylon, and generally took in the scenery. Definitely the prettiest place I've ever been in Iraq.

The museum is located in Kifah Street, near Sab 'awi ( Tayaran) Square.
It is a complex of four galleries, the largest of which is devoted to Iraqi modern art with a permanent collection of paintings, sculptures and ceramics that is constantly being expanded.
Here the visitor can follow up the history of the Iraqi modern art movement from its earliest beginnings to the present.
The other three galleries hold a large number of collective and one-man shows all the year round.

The museum is located in Mamoun Street, near Shuhada (Martyrs) Bridge.
Traditional professions and popular customs of Baghdad are represented at this museum in colorful life-size sculptures.
Many of those professions and customs are fast disappearing or have disappeared, but they are still very interesting to see, even as images.
For instance, you will see the old water-carrier, the weaver, the Zakariya Fast ritual, the bridegroom's ceremony, etc.
A multilingual library on relevant subjects is also part of the museum.
Paintings, photographs, maps and other illustrative material depict aspects of the city's history, together with the portraits of famous men who once ruled the city.
The museum is administered by the capital's mayor’s office.
The museum is/was open all days of the week.

When Abu Jaafar Al-Mansour built Baghdad in AD 762, it was a round city, with walls and four gates at an angle of 90 degrees for defensive purposes.
Main administrative and religious buildings were placed near the center for easy approach. Although the capital was abandoned for Samarra in AD 836, the Abbasids went back to it in AD 892, and the city continued to expand on both sides of the river. Al-Mustarshid Billah, AD 1118-1135, was the first Caliph to build a wall on the eastern (Rusafa) side of the city, which remained until late in the 19th century.
The Eastern Wall was very thick, built from bricks, with several watchtowers and a deep moat connected with the Tigris. The main gates were: Mu'adham (North) Gate,
Dhafariya (Wastani) Gate,
Halaba (Talisman) Gate
and Basaliya Gate.
The only gate extant today is the Wastani Gate located near the Tomb of Omar Sahrawardi - just off Sheikh Omar Street.
It is a high cylinder-shaped tower with a ground circumference of 56 meters, 14.5 meters high, crowned with an octagonal dome. On the northwest side it has a portal 3 meters wide with a pointed arch, in front of which is a bridge across the moat. On the southwest side of the tower is a door that leads to an even bigger and higher bridge over the moat.
In the course of the extensive construction works undertaken by the government, workers on the speedy way near South Gate recently hit upon the remnants of what transpired to have been Halaba (Talisman) Gate, which was destroyed by the Ottomans in 1917. It had been last renewed some seven centuries earlier — in 1221; it has now been preserved with care, to stand as another monument telling a part of the history of Baghdad.

The Iraqis say that few countries in the world are as rich in archaeology as Iraq.
The Iraq Museum, for example, with its great well-organized and carefully labeled collection of archaeological finds is a reflection of this richness.
A record of the many peoples and cultures which flourished in Mesopotamia from time immemorial up to the centuries of the Arab empire, the Museum offers a vivid display of pre-historic remains, of the civilizations and arts of the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Seleucids, Parthians, Sas-sanians, and Abbassids.
The display halls are chronologically arranged in this order.
For the benefit of scholars, the Museum has a rich multilingual library, which adds to the prestige of the Iraq Museum as one of the best in the world of Mesopotamian studies.

Lying opposite Mustansiriya School, Khan Murjan was, together with other buildings and orchards, an endowment to help maintain the school and its scholars.
Architecturally, the Khan is extremely interesting.
It is built round a great central hall with a high ceiling, with two stories of rooms on all sides looking on to it.
To reach the upper rooms there is an elevated path built on brick-ornamented arches.
Fourteen meters high and the only completely roofed Khan in Iraq, it is so roofed that light falls in from above from the apertures of the pointed arches.
It suffered neglect in later times until it was saved and reconstructed in 1935 and turned into a museum of Arab antiquity.
Today Khan Murjan is a first class restaurant where Iraqi dishes are served and folkloric music performed at night.

Mustansiriya School is very special for its unique architecture.
It has a quasi-rectangular plan measuring 104.8 metres in length and 44.2 in width in the north, 48.8 in the south, making up an area of 4,836 square meters.
The built-up part totals 3,121 square meters, the rest being a courtyard of 1,710 sq. m. lined on all sides by ewans — large ornamented galleries completely open to the courtyard.
There are rooms on two stories that were for students lodging, study and lecture halls, a library (that once held 80,000 books), a kitchen, a bathroom and, notably, a pharmacy attached to a hospital. It has its own garden, together with a house once specially used for the study of the Koran and another for the study of Holy Tradition.
Mustansiriya was also famous for its clock that told the hours astronomically: apart from telling the hours, it specified the position of the sun and the moon at every hour, besides other mechanical curiosities.