Samarra Archaeological City

For a century, Samarra governed an Abbasid empire reaching from Tunisia to Central Asia. The archaeological city stretches 41.5 km along both banks of the Tigris north of Baghdad, its 9th-century Great Mosque and celebrated spiral minaret only the best known of countless monuments — roughly 80% of the site still awaits the excavator's trowel. Its artistic innovations travelled across the Islamic world and beyond. Samarra was inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage in 2007.