About 85 km south of Baghdad near Hillah, a city that existed from around 2200 BC and was still inhabited around AD 1000. Hammurabi, who reigned 1792 to 1750 BC, took it from a minor city-state to the capital of an empire and left the law code that carries his name. Nebuchadnezzar II, 604 to 561 BC, rebuilt it on a scale that put the Ishtar Gate and the city walls on the list of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and raised the ziggurat Etemenanki. What has happened to it since is part of the site now. Twentieth-century reconstruction went up on top of the original fabric, and during the Iraq War military vehicles broke ancient pavement and churned archaeological deposits, damage a British Museum report described as taking decades to address. UNESCO finally listed it in 2019. Thousands visit each year, most of them Iraqi.
Hillah, Iraq
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