Ziggurat of Khorsabad

36.5096°N, 43.2277°E.

The ziggurat of Khorsabad — ancient Dur-Sharrukin, the new capital founded by Sargon II of Assyria — in modern Nineveh Governorate, Iraq. Construction began in 717 BCE and the city was inaugurated in 706 BCE; Sargon was killed in battle the following year and his successor Sennacherib abandoned the city, leaving it nearly empty within a decade of its completion. Original base of the ziggurat 43 metres per side; the structure rose in seven terraces of decreasing size, each painted a different colour in the sequence white, black, purple, blue, vermilion, silver, gold according to Assyrian texts. Excavated by Paul-Émile Botta in 1843 and 1844 in the dig that effectively founded modern Assyriology. The ziggurat preserved evidence of an external ramp spiralling around the structure to the summit.

A seven-tier rainbow tower built for a king whose city was abandoned the year after he died, in a complex now divided across the Louvre, the Iraq Museum, and the Oriental Institute in Chicago.