Although best known for its Spiral Minaret, Samarra is much more. It’s the archaeological site of a city that was the short-lived capital of the Abbasids. They built it as a planned city in the countryside, away from the populace of Babylon, to create “a new royal culture revolving around sprawling palatial grounds, public spectacle and a seemingly ceaseless quest for leisurely indulgence". Consider it an early version of one of those new capitals that you also see in Brazil (Brasilia), Indonesia (Nusantara), Myanmar (Naypyidaw). The site is spread across 10 locations in and around the modern city of Samarra, and several of those were visitable in April 2025, although the checkpoint density still is higher here than elsewhere in Iraq.

We started at the Great Mosque. It lies in a particularly ugly patch of the city, almost like an industrial estate. A rope prevented us from coming too close and entering either the mosque or the minaret. The latter, shaped like a Mesopotamian ziggurat, is still picture-perfect. Of the mosque, not much else remains than the outer walls. Both are subject to a restoration project (the official reason given for not being allowed to enter), but no work seemed to be ongoing.

When you go out of the city and cross into the desert, the remains of the Abbasid city walls can still be seen clearly. We drove on for some 15km to the Abu Dalaf mosque. I enjoyed it tremendously from the start: its row of arches and spiral minaret just appear on the horizon in the desert landscape. This mosque was built by a later Abbasid Caliph than the “Great” one, but the minaret has the same design (only slightly smaller). You’re still allowed to climb this one, but I did not get far as it is narrow and windy. The adjoining open-air grounds of the mosque are intact and massive. It’s a lovely place to explore on your own and I had to be coaxed back onto the bus…

Finally, we went to the Grand Palace (Dar al-Khilafa). Although this looks like a construction site from the outside, quite some progress in restoration/reconstruction has been made here to turn it into a recognizable Abbasid palatial structure (similar to what you find in Old Baghdad). Some of the halls are (re)decorated with geometrical and floral stucco designs. 

Like most other Iraqi WHS, Samarra is still on the Danger list and they seem to have trouble finding a way out. The site is so large that they don’t know where to start, and the vast area with limited oversight also invites encroachment. In 2023, there has been a Reactive Monitoring Mission to the site by ICOMOS, which found it needed "to develop an overall comprehensive conservation planning framework with a clear conservation approach". As elsewhere in Iraq, they'd also need to deal with parts that had been heavily reconstructed in the past, stop further reconstruction work and stick to using materials and techniques that are compatible with the original ones. At inscription, restoration work overall was considered to have been in accordance with international standards. There were some reinforced concrete solutions at the Great Mosque from the Saddam era, but those have now mostly been removed. Also, the circular basin at the Grand Palace was a complete reconstruction from that period - they now try to "fix" this by adding a layer with more appropriate materials, but that of course alters the original shape of the structure even more.