Baghdad

Baghdad has very old buildings made of brick.

One is a college where students studied about 800 years ago. A big museum shows treasures from long, long ago. Old markets sell copper, cloth and gold.

No buildings survive from the time of the Round City, but a few from the later Abbasid caliphs still stand. The Mustanṣiriyyah madrasah, a college built in 1233, and the Abbasid Palace, from the late 1100s or early 1200s, have both been restored as museums. The Wasṭānī Gate is the last piece of the city's medieval wall.

The Iraq Museum, founded in 1923, holds treasures from ancient Mesopotamia. Downtown, Rashīd Street has the city's copper, cloth and gold bazaars, and Taḥrīr Square is home to the Liberation Monument, a famous work by the sculptor Jawād Salīm.

No monuments survive from the early Abbasid period. Late Abbasid buildings include the Abbasid Palace (late 12th or early 13th century) and the Mustanṣiriyyah madrasah, a law college founded by the caliph al-Mustanṣir in 1233, both restored as museums, and the Sahrāwardī Mosque (1234). The Wasṭānī Gate, the only remnant of the medieval wall, is now a museum. From the 13th and 14th centuries come the minaret of the caliph's mosque (1289) and the Marjān Khān (1359), a restored caravansary, or travelers' inn.

The Iraq Museum (1923) holds major archaeological treasures from ancient Mesopotamia; some artifacts were lost when museums were looted after 2003. Baghdad also has major mosques and shrines that are centers of Muslim pilgrimage, each with a library, and a cultural revival after 1958 produced modern monuments such as Jawād Salīm's Liberation Monument in Taḥrīr Square. Traditional houses have latticed windows and inner courtyards.

In Baghdad, people ride big red buses with two floors.

Taxis zoom around the city too. Bridges cross the Tigris River. Trains go to other cities in Iraq.

Baghdad is the center of Iraq's transportation. The main ways to get around the city are red double-decker buses, first brought in by the British, and taxis. Expressways built in the 1980s link the center with the suburbs, and bridges cross the Tigris.

Iraq's main railway lines meet in Baghdad, running south to Basra near the Persian Gulf and north to Mosul. Roads link the city with Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and an international airport serves the city.

Baghdad is the hub of Iraq's transportation system. The main lines of the state railway meet here, linking Basra and Umm Qaṣr near the Persian Gulf, Kirkūk and Erbil in the northeast, Mosul in the north and Al-Qāʾim near the Syrian border. A regional road network runs to Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and expressways completed in the 1980s link the center and suburbs.

Public transport relies mainly on the red double-deck bus, introduced by the British, and the public taxi. A series of bridges, one of them a railroad trestle, crosses the Tigris. Baghdad's international airport, home of Iraqi Airways (founded 1945), was closed throughout the 1990s because of U.N. sanctions. In the 1860s, steamships on the Tigris had helped restore the city's trade.

Summer in Baghdad is extremely hot and dry.

It almost never rains in summer. Winter is cool, and a little rain falls. Sometimes strong winds blow dusty sand through the city.

Baghdad has very hot, dry summers and cool, damp winters. On a typical July day, the high is about 44 °C and the low about 26 °C. In January, highs average about 16 °C and lows about 4 °C, and it occasionally freezes.

Very little rain falls: only about 120 millimeters in a year, mostly from December to April, and none at all in summer. In spring and early summer, winds from the northwest called the shamāl can bring sandstorms that cover the city in a dusty haze.

WMO normals for 1976–2008 give mean daily maxima and minima of 15.5 °C and 3.8 °C in January and 44.0 °C and 25.5 °C in July; June through September record no rain at all, and the monthly totals add up to only about 123 mm (Britannica gives about 150 mm a year). Britannica notes that midday highs can reach the high 40s °C in July and August, eased by low humidity (10 to 50 percent) and nighttime drops of 17 °C or more.

Spring and fall are brief but pleasant. The shamāl, the prevailing northwesterly wind of spring and early summer, brings sandstorms. Floods from the Tigris's tributaries long threatened the city until a dam at Sāmarrāʾ was completed in 1956, which allowed Baghdad to expand east and west.

Families in Baghdad love gardens and parks.

On weekends, people visit cafés and parks by the river. A favorite dish is fish from the Tigris, cooked over a fire.

Many people in Baghdad love gardens and family outings. On weekends, restaurants, cafés and parks fill up. A favorite local dish is masgūf, fish from the Tigris roasted over an open fire. Two islands in the river have swimming pools and cafés, and Al-Zawrāʾ Park has a zoo.

Baghdad is Iraq's center of higher education, and education is free all the way through university. The University of Baghdad was established in 1957. The city is also known for its painters, sculptors, poets and writers.

Britannica describes Baghdadis' affinity for gardens and family recreation: weekend cafés and parks, masgūf (Tigris fish roasted over an open fire), river islands with pools and cafés, an amusement park and Al-Zawrāʾ Park and Zoo, though war and hardship from the 1990s disrupted these habits. Most people are Arab and Muslim, belonging to both Sunni and Shiʿi communities, with Kurds, Armenians and Chaldean and Assyrian Christians among other groups.

The governorate has more than 1,000 primary schools, and education is free up to and including university; the University of Baghdad dates from 1957, Al-Mustanṣiriyyah University from 1963. Iraqi poets pioneered free verse in Arabic, and museums include the National Museum of Modern Art (1962). Most of Iraq's manufacturing, finance and commerce is concentrated in and around Baghdad, and the government is the main employer.