Where to Stay in Baghdad, Baghdad Governorate

What is Baghdad known for?

Baghdad is known as the capital and largest city of Iraq, and once the seat of the Abbasid Caliphate at the height of the Islamic Golden Age. Learning drew the world here. The National Museum of Iraq and the Baghdad Tower stand among its landmarks, in a city long counted a financial and commercial centre of the Middle East and the Arab world.

What are the main landmarks in Baghdad?

Baghdad keeps its landmarks along the Tigris and through the old central quarters. The museums come first. The National Museum of Iraq and the Abd Al-Karim Qasim Museum hold the city's collections, while the Baghdad Tower rises over the skyline.

Churches mark the streets too, among them the Latin Saint Joseph Cathedral Baghdad, the Cathedral of Mary Mother of Sorrows, and the Church of the Virgin Mary, set near public works like the Save Iraqi culture monument and the Al-Jawahiri House.

What is the history of Baghdad?

Baghdad was founded in 762 on the banks of the Tigris and rose quickly into one of the great cities of the medieval world. Its rise was extraordinary. As the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, it became a centre of learning and culture through the years of the Islamic Golden Age, drawing scholars, translators, and traders from across the known world to the river's edge.

The city gathered knowledge. That inheritance still shapes how the city is read. Baghdad carries its past as the seat of the Abbasid Caliphate and a capital of the wider Arab world, a role written into its long standing on the Tigris.

Centuries have passed since. Yet the memory of the Islamic Golden Age endures in the identity of the capital of Iraq, a city whose founding in 762 set it among the oldest of the great centres of the Middle East.

Where is Baghdad?

Baghdad lies on the banks of the Tigris in central Iraq, the river splitting the city as it runs through. Water defines the plan. The capital sits astride the Tigris in central Iraq, the river ordering its shape from the founding onward, its two banks carrying the halves of the capital of Iraq.

What is the climate of Baghdad?

Baghdad sits in a subtropical band north of the equator, and its summers are long, hot, and dry along the Tigris. The heat is severe. Rain keeps mostly to the cooler months, so the year in the capital of Iraq swings between a fierce, dry summer and a short, mild winter rather than through four balanced seasons.

How do you get to Baghdad?

Baghdad is where most arrivals to Iraq begin, the capital drawing travellers from across the country and the wider Middle East. The city stands inland. Reaching it means flying into the capital or coming overland through Baghdad Governorate, since no sea lane touches this river city on the Tigris, from which the rest of Iraq opens outward.