What should a first-time traveler see in Iraq beyond the obvious highlights?

A tell is an artificial hill made of its own history, and Erbil's is the clearest example on the World Heritage List of a settlement that is still a settlement. UNESCO's record for the property runs well past its inscription: subsequent Committee decisions are logged as 40COM 7B.23, 42COM 7B.53 and 44COM 7B.15, which is the paper trail of an active conservation case rather than a closed file.

Iraq's wider list rewards anyone who looks past Babylon. Hatra was inscribed in 1985, and UNESCO's own record notes it was added to the List of World Heritage in Danger on 1 July 2015. Ashur, also known as Qal'at Sherqat, was inscribed in 2003. The Tentative List — the queue of sites the state has formally put forward — names Nimrud, the Ancient City of Nineveh, Nippur, the Old City of Mosul, Lalish Temple, Kirkuk Citadel and Aqar Quf, the ancient Dur-Kurigalzu.

The south offers something different again. The IUCN records the Ahwar of Southern Iraq as a single property of 7 components: 3 archaeological sites — including the cities of Uruk and Ur and the Tell Eridu site — and 4 wetland marsh areas, inscribed together in 2016. One designation covering both the earliest cities and the marshes beside them is unusual on the List, and it is the reason the Ahwar is classed as a mixed property rather than a cultural or natural one.

The Erbil tell rises out of the surrounding city as a raised oval of built-up ground — not a hill the citadel sits on, but a hill the citadel is made of, accumulated from the rebuilding of everything that stood there before.

Hatra's 2015 addition to the Danger List changes what "visiting" would mean. Danger listing is a formal Committee finding that a property's values are under serious threat, and it triggers international reporting rather than closing a site. The designation is the honest measure of the gap between Iraq's heritage inventory and its current accessibility.

• Kurdistan Region — Erbil Citadel's 2014 inscription and its ongoing decision record make it the most documented site in the north.
• The Tigris corridor — Ashur, inscribed in 2003, and Nimrud and Nineveh on the Tentative List sit along the same axis.
• The far south — The Ahwar's 7 components put Uruk, Ur and Eridu within one designation alongside 4 marshes.

Borders are the specific legal hazard. The State Department records that the Kurdistan Regional Government will impose prison sentences of up to 10 years on people who illegally cross the Iraq–Syria border, and its advisory tells travelers to avoid travel near Iraq's northern borders. Several of the sites above sit in exactly that zone, and a navigational mistake there is not a visa problem but a criminal one.

The Iraq trip-planning question in this group gathers the entry picture, the aviation notices and the conservation status of the southern marshes.