Speaking of Babylon...

How the restoration of ancient Babylon is drawing tourists back to Iraq

How the restoration of ancient Babylon is drawing tourists back to Iraq

Work on the Temple of Ninmakh and walls at the Ishtar Gate is nearing completion at the Mesopotamian metropolis, a victim of centuries of damage and neglect

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/09/12

"Largely funded by the US embassy in Baghdad, the restoration of the temple and the north retaining wall are part of the Future of Babylon Project, initiated 15 years ago, which aims to document, waterproof and stabilise structures throughout the 2,500-acre site. (The US embassy cancelled funding for a planned walkway spanning the site of the Ishtar Gate in July due to budget cuts.)"

(Well between the befriending the Antichrist in Syria

and rebuilding Babylon, the US is certainly on a roll...)

'Many Iraqis would like to see the reconstruction of the Ishtar Gate returned from the Pergamon Museum in Berlin."

(Dont even get me started about

Pergamon... 

(Ctrl F and insert it in the search box 

to find it on the page)

"they knew 1:06:32 my mentality in terms of expecting literal Babylon on the radius to be to 1:06:38 be relevant..."

"...if you start to see next month, 

next year, five years, 

who knows when 

some things start to happen 1:22:44 

to bring Babylon 

to more World prominence..."

"Visitor boom

"The completion of these two projects coincides with a boom in tourism. Even in the midday heat, when tour guides refuse to emerge from their office, visitors from Romania, Russia and Iran enthusiastically explore attractions including the largely intact Lion of Babylon, the processional way and the museum next to a reconstructed Ishtar Gate."

"The return of heritage tourism is one of Iraq’s few recent success stories. Even as sectarian tensions simmer and the electrical grid has yet to be restored 22 years after it was destroyed in the US invasion, Babylon is being reborn.

“We’ve had record numbers of visitors this year,” Raad Hamid Abdullah, Babylon’s antiquities and heritage inspector, tells The Art Newspaper. In 2024 Babylon hosted 43,530 Iraqi tourists and 5,370 foreign tourists, an increase from 36,957 Iraqi visitors and 4,109 foreigners in 2023, he says."

“Now even locals from the adjoining city of Babil are coming,” Abdullah says. “It has once more become a popular place for family gatherings and wedding parties,” he says, adding proudly, “Babylon is a symbol of Iraq.”