Architectural heritage of Kurdistan
Eleven thousand years of building
From the stone circles of Göbekli Tepe to the citadel of Erbil, Kurdistan — on the northern rim of Mesopotamia, one of the cradles of civilisation — holds some of the oldest architecture on earth. These are its landmarks across all four parts of Kurdistan, chosen and introduced by architect Aram Mizuri.
21 landmarks · 7 UNESCO World Heritage Sites
- Göbekli Tepe (Girê Mirazan) Near Riha (Şanlıurfa) · c. 9600–8200 BC The oldest monumental architecture known on earth — stone circles raised some 11,000 years ago, before farming, pottery or writing. Read more
- Shanidar Cave Bradost mountain, Erbil province · Tens of thousands of years The first shelter: a great cave in the Zagros where Neanderthals lived and buried their dead, and where some of the earliest villagers later came. Read more
- Tell Brak (Nagar) Near Hasakah, Jazira · c. 6000–1300 BC One of the first cities on earth: a mound forty metres high, home to the "Eye Temple" and a palace of the kings of Akkad. Read more
- Urkesh (Tell Mozan) Near Amûdê, Jazira · c. 4000–1300 BC Capital of the Hurrians, a mountain people of the third millennium BC, with a temple raised on a monumental terrace above the plain. Read more
- Erbil Citadel Erbil · Inhabited since at least the 5th millennium BC A city on a hill made of its own past — one of the oldest continuously inhabited places in the world, still the heart of Erbil. Read more
- Tell Halaf (Guzana) Serê Kaniyê (Ras al-Ayn) · c. 6000 BC; palace 10th–9th century BC The site that gave its name to the Halaf culture of painted pottery, and later the Aramaean city of Guzana with its palace of stone giants. Read more
- Ain Dara Temple Near Efrîn (Afrin) · c. 1300–740 BC A Syro-Hittite temple guarded by carved lions, with giant footprints cut into its threshold, as if a god had walked in. Read more
- Jerwan Aqueduct Near Shekhan, Duhok province · c. 690 BC One of the oldest aqueducts in the world — a stone bridge for water, built by the Assyrian king Sennacherib to carry mountain streams to Nineveh. Read more
- Khinis Reliefs (Bavian) Near Atrush, Duhok province · c. 690 BC Where Sennacherib's great canal began: kings and gods carved into the cliffs above a mountain gorge. Read more
- Bisotun Inscription Near Kirmaşan (Kermanshah) · c. 520 BC A relief and inscription carved high on a cliff on the ancient road from Mesopotamia to Iran — the key that unlocked cuneiform. Read more
- Mount Nemrut Near Semsûr (Adıyaman) · 1st century BC A king's tomb on a mountain summit: an artificial peak of stone flanked by colossal seated gods, their fallen heads facing sunrise and sunset. Read more
- Taq-e Bostan Kirmaşan (Kermanshah) · 4th–7th century AD Sasanian royal reliefs carved into arched grottoes beside a spring-fed pool, at the foot of a mountain. Read more
- Takht-e Soleyman Near Takab · 5th–7th century AD; rebuilt 13th century A walled Sasanian sanctuary around a deep, spring-fed lake on a hilltop — home of one of the three great fire temples of the empire. Read more
- City Walls of Amed (Diyarbakır) Amed (Diyarbakır) · 4th century AD, rebuilt through the Middle Ages Nearly six kilometres of black basalt walls and towers around the old city, above the gardens of the Tigris. Read more
- Lalish Shekhan, Duhok province · 12th century AD and earlier The holiest place of the Yazidis — a sanctuary in a quiet valley, known for its fluted conical spires. Read more
- Mudhafaria Minaret (Choli Minaret) Minaret Park, Erbil · Late 12th – early 13th century A brick minaret from Erbil's golden age under Muzaffar al-Din Gökböri, standing alone in a park since its mosque disappeared. Read more
- Hasankeyf (Heskîf) On the Tigris, Êlih (Batman) province · 12th–15th century, on a far older site A medieval capital on cliffs above the Tigris, with cave dwellings, a great bridge and minarets — largely lost under a dam lake in 2020. Read more
- Mardin Old Town Mêrdîn (Mardin) · 12th–15th century and later A city of honey-coloured stone stepping down a mountainside above the Mesopotamian plain, with madrasas, mosques and churches side by side. Read more
- Amedi Duhok province · Ancient; capital of Bahdinan, 14th–19th century A town on a flat-topped mountain, entered through the carved Bab Zebar gate — once the capital of the Kurdish emirate of Bahdinan. Read more
- Ishak Pasha Palace Near Bazîd (Doğubayazıt) · 1685–1784 A palace on a terrace below Mount Ararat, a century in the building, mixing Ottoman, Persian, Armenian and Seljuk traditions in one carved whole. Read more
- Hawraman (Uraman) Hawraman Takht and the villages of Hawraman · A living tradition, thousands of years old Stepped stone villages on steep Zagros slopes, where the roof of one house is the yard of the house above. Read more
Chosen and introduced by Aram Mizuri, architect in Erbil