South Kurdistan · Bashur · Ancient Mesopotamia
Erbil Citadel
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.
UNESCO World Heritage Site
- Period
- Inhabited since at least the 5th millennium BC
- Place
- Erbil
- Region
- South Kurdistan · Bashur
- Age
- Ancient Mesopotamia
The citadel mound rises around thirty metres above the city, built up layer by layer by thousands of years of houses rebuilt on the ruins of the ones before. In Assyrian times this was Arbela, famous for its temple of the goddess Ishtar.
The houses and alleys on top today are mostly from the late Ottoman era, wrapped by a continuous wall of house fronts that reads, from below, as a single fortress. The citadel became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2014 and is being restored house by house.
Chosen and introduced by Aram Mizuri, architect in Erbil