Comments

• 

  Wissam Al Khoury August 26, 2022 at 9:14am

  Some 3½ hours south of Baghdad, the Ziggurat of Ur is Iraq's answer to Egypt's Pyramid of Giza. As the capital of Mesopotamia, it was the center of civilization around 4,000 years ago, and is now open to visitors: https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20220822-the-ziggurat-of-ur-iraq...

  

  Iraq's answer to the pyramids

  Egypt may have the Pyramids of Giza, but Iraq has the Ziggurat of Ur – an incredibly well-preserved engineering achievement that towers over the ruin…
• 

  María José April 1, 2022 at 12:29pm

  This amazing country - once a cradle of civilisation in places like Babylon - has of course been through a lot of trauma in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, and now it's finally starting to recover a bit of a tourism industry, with 107,000 visitors in 2021. Read more about it here: https://news.yahoo.com/dangerous-land-tourists-trickle-back-0529300...

  

  In a 'dangerous' land: tourists trickle back to Iraq

  An American tourist poses for a holiday snap in Iraq, in front of the blue-brick Ishtar Gate that was rebuilt at the ancient site of Babylon under di…
• 

  Michael Luongo October 21, 2012 at 9:13pm

  I had done several Iraq travel pieces for Bloomberg Muse, the arts and culture division of Bloomberg News.....on Babylon, Baghdad and Suleymania and Erbil and Halabja in Kurdistan......all amazing places to see, but yes, southern Iraq, where Baghdad and Babylon are, a little hard to visit though there are tour groups to both.....Kurdistan is easy, no visa necessary for entry beforehand, you get it when you land (arduous process for Southern Iraq) Anyway, this is all the cradle of civilization...........
• 

  Vacation Wanderer October 21, 2012 at 8:35pm

  Kurdistan is so much different as said before by Shannon than the rest of Iraq.  There are still insurgent / terrorist groups active in Baghdad, Mosul and other regions.  Having worked there for 4.5 years, I would NOT recommend traveling there "indie" style because you open yourself up to many negative factors.  There have been group tours and its quit possible there were behind the scene negotiations to leave the group alone.  However; thats no guarantee.  So, unless you dream of being held hostage, I would avoid it until the situation gets better there.
• 

  David Paul Appell November 4, 2010 at 8:51pm

  Good tip, Mike. Hopefully Hinterland will join us on here. In any case, I'm sure we'll be talking a lot of security issues. Another deadly bombing in one of Baghdad's Shiite neighborhoods this week, for example -- tragic, for sure, but from a tourism standpoint it's an area unlikely to see any tourists. Also, has tourism in Ahmed Awa, in the Kurdish zone, suffered noticeably since those 3 American hikers were lured across the Iranian border and jailed? What would be the best way, when visiting that area, to avoid such a possibility if the border area is apparently as unclear as it is?
• 

  Michael Luongo November 4, 2010 at 7:36pm

  There is a British company called Hinterland which runs tours...when I was there I was also told of individual tourists who come too......the visa itself is very hard to get a mix of bureaucratic inefficiency and other issues, so best procured through a group or through contacts.
• 

  John Kipper November 3, 2010 at 3:18pm

  This would be the trip of a lifetime!!!
  
  Any tour operators running trips to Iraq at all, or is it all indie travel?