BAGHDAD—It’s early morning. A cool breeze blows off the Tigris. I stand in a Baghdad avenue and take a look at the map in my hand after which once more on the door and surprise if I’m in the proper place. A cat eyes me from the crumbling wall. I’m in search of the home of Isaac Amit, who lived right here till 1971. His household fled Iraq after the Ba’ath occasion got here to energy; they had been among the many final members of Baghdad’s Jewish group to go away town. In my hand is a drawing of the home despatched to me by Amit. “I keep in mind each nook,” he tells me. “I keep in mind it very nicely, as a result of all my life I’ve been solely at that place.” I want I knew town in addition to Isaac. In entrance of me are dozens of crumbling homes, every with its personal story. Regardless of Amit’s drawing, I can’t determine which one was as soon as his. I stroll on.
Baghdad’s structure is extraordinary: crumbling artwork deco neighborhoods, a Le Corbusier gymnasium, and the nice railway station constructed by the British utilizing all the recent climate architectural methods they’d realized on the subcontinent. Mid-century modernism flourished right here too, in a post-1958 revolutionary local weather of cultural optimism with new cash from oil. Walter Gropius and a agency known as The Architects Collaborative deliberate Baghdad College. Iraqi architects like Mohamed Makiya and Rifat Chadirji wove echoes of Abbasid and Mesopotamian varieties into a contemporary however distinctly native type. A stroll on this metropolis can take you alongside the tree-lined banks of the Tigris, previous Ottoman brickwork, Nineteen Thirties villas, and Nineteen Seventies concrete futurism. It’s layered, fragile, and in contrast to wherever else.
The Haydar-Khana Mosque in central Baghdad (prime) and homes within the metropolis’s former Jewish neighborhood (backside) in November 2025.
From left: Mustansiriyah College; the doorway arch to Baghdad College, designed by Walter Gropius and TAC; and a gymnasium designed by Le Corbusier in Baghdad in November 2025.
Mohammed Alsoufi doesn’t cease transferring or pointing issues out or saying good day to nearly everybody. He’s an architect and he’s taking me on a stroll via the historic central district whose reconstruction—a collaboration between authorities, the banking sector and the mayor’s workplace—he now oversees. Decay, accelerated by the poverty and shortages of the sanctions period, have been as huge a risk as battle to the survival of Baghdad’s historic neighborhoods. Many individuals “hated a specific period—even when it produced good buildings—as a result of it was linked to political intervals,” he tells me. Neglecting or dismantling the infrastructure of that interval was additionally a means of forgetting, of erasing parts of a previous that some folks needed to neglect.
His phrases remind me of an earlier dialog I had on the terrace of a tea home, the place a suicide bomb killed the brother of the person who had simply refilled my cup. Ammar Karim, an Iraqi journalist who was additionally there that day, informed me in regards to the concrete blast partitions that, till not too long ago, divided this and so many neighborhoods throughout town. They had been the USA’ contribution to the structure of Baghdad, he says. We had been glad to see them gone.
Baghdad is layered with historical past, but sure layers are already gone, peeled away, sooner than they could possibly be saved. Some are missed and a few, just like the partitions, are mourned by nobody.
As I stroll with Alsoufi down Rasheed Road, the cultural lifetime of the historic metropolis hums round us: Newly restored facades within the winter daylight, booksellers and {hardware} shops, cafes stuffed with males taking part in dominoes and backgammon. Via all of it, he’s telling the tales of possession and connections which can be behind each restoration. Nevertheless it hums just a little extra softly than it as soon as did. A lot of those that made up Iraq’s city mental and cultural elite have left town and haven’t but come again.
High: Crumbling buildings within the historic heart. Backside left: Ottoman buildings seen via the doorways of {a partially} restored constructing. Backside proper: Mohammed Alsoufi with maps of town in November 2025.
Right here, in Baghdad’s historic heart, the traditional capital of the Abbasid Empire is beneath our toes, buried over centuries. It was buried most not too long ago by the Ottomans within the early twentieth century, once they carved out Rasheed Road to maneuver automobiles extra rapidly than they may via the older winding lanes. This was the “Inexperienced Zone” of the Ottoman administration after which the British Mandate. Later, after independence, it turned the cultural and mental coronary heart of town.
“So there’s a number of Baghdads we’re speaking about,” says Kanan Makiya, the Iraqi American educational identified for his work on Iraqi monuments and tyranny. “There’s the unique Baghdad, because it was, from the Ottoman period, till the British got here. There’s a British contribution from the Nineteen Twenties, ’30s. … A brand new story opens up once more after 1968, when the Ba’ath got here to energy,” and once more post-2003. “All these are totally different cities which occur to share the identical identify.”
Rashid Road (left) and modernist buildings in central Baghdad in November 2025.
“Many components of our id and cultural reminiscence had been broken or misplaced over the previous a long time … the main points that type the emotional texture of Iraqi society,” explains Haider Ibrahim, a movie producer who lives and works right here. It’s a sentiment echoed by Geraldine Chatelard, a historian of recent Iraq, when she tells me, “It’s total neighborhoods of homes from the Nineteen Twenties, ’30s, and ’40s … that gave Baghdad its very explicit character,” including, “The disappearance of this city constructed atmosphere … has a profound influence on the best way folks orient themselves and outline themselves as Baghdadians—as Iraqis.”
Down the road, I go to the location workplace for the restoration of the Al-Khulafa Mosque, a constructing which itself straddles two eras of Baghdad’s historical past. There’s a Thirteenth-century minaret—as soon as the best level within the metropolis—that now leans like an Islamic Pisa. Then, wrapped round it, is a modernist mosque constructed by Mohamed Makiya within the Nineteen Sixties, in the present day considered a masterpiece of Iraqi modernist structure.
On the workplace, I meet Radwan Hamoshi, an engineer, and his daughter, Maryam. Initially from Mosul, they fled as refugees to Australia however then got here again, first to assist reconstruct their metropolis after it was devastated by the Islamic State, and now to cease this Baghdad minaret from toppling over into the road.
Radwan Hamoshi on the Thirteenth-century leaning minaret of Khulafa Mosque. Beneath, scaffolding across the minaret and a element from the mosque’s Nineteen Sixties inside.
Exterior, a really noisy chicken market fills the pavement, huge vultures perched on the cages of surprisingly calm chickens. To the sound of geese and pigeons, Radwan and Maryam Hamoshi supply me tea and discuss me via the complexities of the work: the short-term sleeve they’ve wrapped across the tower; the cables that maintain it regular. There’s an image of the Leaning Tower of Pisa on the desk. Ours is older, they are saying proudly.
Exterior the workplace door, mild streams via Mohamed Makiya’s delicate archways. Don’t {photograph} all of the instruments, says Radwan, pointing to the piles of kit below the dome of the mosque. “Folks shouldn’t see that. They need to give attention to the fantastic thing about this place. Restoring that is our legacy. A legacy for Iraq.”
Throughout city, Namir El Akabi, the chairman of certainly one of Iraq’s greatest actual property builders, sits in his glossy boardroom. The inhabitants has been booming, he says, however for 40 years, they didn’t construct something. Now high-rises are being constructed all around the metropolis. “There is no such thing as a extra land so that you can go horizontal,” he says, however once they first began constructing upwards, folks didn’t wish to reside on the upper flooring. “All people needed the bottom or the primary flooring. They anxious in regards to the elevator, about electrical energy.” It has improved however, till not too long ago, planning was haphazard. “It was kind of random. The previous mayor would say, ‘It is a great place for a high-rise, this isn’t a great place’” with no plan behind it.
New high-rise building in central Baghdad in November 2025.
Caecilia Pieri, a historian of twentieth century Baghdad on the Institut français du Proche Orient and the creator of Baghdad Arts Deco, informed me that, “in Iraq, what destroys heritage just isn’t battle, it’s reconstruction. The mannequin of growth in Iraq is Dubai: Towers, amusement parks, and malls. The remainder appears much less necessary.” Kanan Makiya informed me one thing comparable: What’s misplaced is a “significant, non-kitsch relationship to 1’s personal previous.” What modifications, finally, is “the panorama of town. It’s a special metropolis with the identical identify.”
I ask El Akabi in regards to the stress between growth and preservation. He sighs. He tells me he loves the heritage of town, and that he’d wish to personal and restore one of many previous homes himself (just like the one Amit left). However he provides that most individuals should not up to now. They need “well being, educating, schooling” and a “roof over their head.” Builders too: “They’re at all times in search of no matter is new internationally. … They need Baghdad to appear like another capital on the earth.”
He sounds wistful. “I imply, you’ll be able to perceive why folks need one thing that’s new and that’s contemporary and that’s not one thing they’ve seen earlier than. I can perceive this.” It jogs my memory of one thing Alsoufi informed me as nicely: “For thus a few years we had been locked in. … Folks had been bored with what they’d. They only needed new issues right here.”
From left: The Ottoman Qishla Clock Tower within the distance; a constructing on Rashid Road; and a concrete barrier in entrance of the Syriac Catholic Cathedral of Al-Sayyida al-Nejat, the location of an assault that left dozens lifeless in 2010.
I ask in regards to the intersection of corruption and growth. El Akabi pauses. “Generally I get in hassle for talking too actually,” he says. “Is there corruption? Completely. No one can say in any other case. It’s widespread, in each division, each ministry, each sector.” It has gotten higher, he says, nevertheless it takes time.
I ask him in regards to the future, in regards to the new Baghdad that’s rising throughout us, town that looms out the window within the form of the brand new Zaha Hadid-designed Central Financial institution of Iraq tower, which is nearing completion. “What we’re lacking,” says El Akabi, “is extra consideration to our historic heritage … whereas we are attempting to construct Baghdad to be a contemporary metropolis.”
Everybody can’t agree on every little thing. I ask Alsoufi in regards to the historic Palestine Resort. It was constructed throughout Saddam Hussein’s early Eighties constructing spree when, in Kanan Makiya’s phrases, Iraqi architects had been “doing commissions they’d by no means [imagined] of their wildest desires on a scale they hadn’t dreamt of both.” It was additionally etched ceaselessly into journalistic reminiscence when a U.S. tank shell killed two reporters there in 2003. Now, it’s being stripped of its unforgettable modernist honeycomb exterior and redeveloped right into a generic glass rectangle. I wouldn’t have carried out that, Mohammed tells me. However he didn’t actively oppose it both: “In case you say no to every little thing, you lose the facility of your ‘no.’ … I’ve to decide on the battles I wish to battle.”
The stripped exterior of the once-iconic Palestine Resort (left); a hazy view of latest high-rise building within the distance.
Later I return to the historic heart and Mutanabbi Road. I go to the bookshop of an previous good friend, consuming tea because the sound of pedestrians and customers filters up from beneath. Within the hospitable custom of Iraqis, he retains attempting to present me books.
This complete avenue was destroyed in a automotive bomb in 2007. There have been dozens of deaths. However right here, Pieri tells me, “For as soon as all of them agreed—college, corporations, state, municipality—to rebuild in any respect prices, and in lower than two years the road was rebuilt kind of identically.”
“For an skilled in heritage like me … it wasn’t at all times carried out in accordance with the principles.” The reconstruction wasn’t excellent, she says, however “who’re we to evaluate that? Isn’t it extra necessary to have a society that reconstitutes itself quite than a constructing repaired identically?”
Alsoufi explains to me that his greatest concern now could be gentrification and the lack of the person character of the place that goes with it. We see that in Europe, he says: “Locations begin to appear like one another and never like the place they’re from.” However within the meantime, “You attempt to do what you’ll be able to to make it a greater place—nevertheless it’s not assured.”
Nightfall is falling and the booksellers that fill the road by day are packing up. Down by the river, persons are taking photographs within the gentle mild: birds circling below the bridge; the Ottoman clock tower reflecting within the water. “Folks used to hate this previous,” says Alsoufi. “Now they’re beginning to fall in love with it once more.”
Mutanabbi Road, the center of cultural and mental life in Baghdad, in November 2025.
After we are saying goodbye, I stroll south alongside the Tigris at midnight.
I take into consideration Amit telling me how they used to place their beds on the roof and sleep up there all summer season, avoiding the warmth. “You get up at 3:30, 4 o’clock. There was no mild. You take a look at the sky, there have been billions of stars.”
The sky now could be hazy—town brighter, louder, leaning towards its personal future. However out among the many new towers and cranes and dirt, one other Baghdad remains to be there: the one Amit remembers, the one Alsoufi fights for, the one Radwan and Maryam Hamoshi fastidiously rebuild.
Baghdad has at all times been a metropolis remade by energy. It’s occurring once more now—as its inhabitants determine what to neglect, what to hold ahead, and what to give up to cash or modernity. In a spot that has realized too nicely the way to bury the previous, remembering turns into its personal form of structure—formed by the quiet insistence of those that stay, and people who return, that town remains to be theirs to rebuild.
The celebs could be more durable to see today. However folks nonetheless search for.
