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Iraq’s Famed ‘Hunchback’ of Mosul Rebuilt Brick by Brick 

Builders work on the final stages of the reconstruction of the historic Great Mosque of al-Nuri, whose "Al-Hadba" leaning minaret which dates back to the 12th century was destroyed by ISIS group fighters, in Mosul's old city in northern Iraq on February 3, 2025. (AFP)
Builders work on the final stages of the reconstruction of the historic Great Mosque of al-Nuri, whose "Al-Hadba" leaning minaret which dates back to the 12th century was destroyed by ISIS group fighters, in Mosul's old city in northern Iraq on February 3, 2025. (AFP)
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Iraq’s Famed ‘Hunchback’ of Mosul Rebuilt Brick by Brick 

Builders work on the final stages of the reconstruction of the historic Great Mosque of al-Nuri, whose "Al-Hadba" leaning minaret which dates back to the 12th century was destroyed by ISIS group fighters, in Mosul's old city in northern Iraq on February 3, 2025. (AFP)
Builders work on the final stages of the reconstruction of the historic Great Mosque of al-Nuri, whose "Al-Hadba" leaning minaret which dates back to the 12th century was destroyed by ISIS group fighters, in Mosul's old city in northern Iraq on February 3, 2025. (AFP)

The leaning minaret of Mosul in northern Iraq has been restored using its original brickwork, years after it was reduced to rubble under ISIS rule.

The Al-Hadba or "hunchback" minaret is part of the historic Al-Nuri Mosque from where former ISIS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in July 2014 declared his so-called "caliphate" that committed atrocities across swathes of both Syria and Iraq.

The mosque and minaret were destroyed in June 2017 during the battle to oust ISIS from Mosul, and Iraq's authorities accused the extremists of planting explosives before their withdrawal.

The minaret and mosque are the latest landmarks in Mosul to be restored with the help of United Nations heritage body UNESCO, which has worked for five years to revive several sites there.

The Al-Hadba minaret of today is an exact replica of the old one, "built with the same bricks", said Abdullah Mahmoud of the Iraqi department of antiquities.

"Al-Hadba is our identity, and by restoring it, the identity of the city has been reclaimed."

The restored minaret's tilt has been retained at 160 centimeters (63 inches), just as it was in the 1960s.

However, engineers have reinforced the foundations so it no longer leans quite so precariously, as it began to do gradually after being built in the 12th century.

"The minaret's body from the inside needed 96,000 new bricks," Mahmoud said.

"But for the exterior we used 26,000 old bricks" to preserve its historical legacy.

A picture shows a view of the historic Great Mosque of Al-Nuri's "Al-Hadba" leaning minaret after its reconstruction in Mosul's old city in northern Iraq on February 3, 2025. (AFP)

- 'Massive change' -

Days before work was completed, hundreds of workers put the finishing touches to Al-Nuri's columns, dome and yard.

Mahmoud said the mihrab, a niche indicating the direction of the holy city of Makkah, has been largely repaired using its original stones.

But the minbar, from where sermons are delivered, has lost most of its original pieces.

Across the street, Imad Zaki, a former muezzin at the mosque, said: "Every day I stand here for an hour to watch as they are restored to their original state."

"Today one can feel the spirituality. It's as if our souls have finally found peace," added the 52-year-old, wearing a long traditional Iraqi abaya, or robe.

Eighty percent of Mosul's old city was destroyed in the fight against ISIS, and more than 12,000 tons of rubble was removed for the UNESCO restoration project, which also included Al-Tahira and Our Lady of the Hour churches and 124 heritage houses.

The Al-Tahira Church, dating from 1862, has been rebuilt with its arcades, embellished pillars and stained-glass windows.

Maria Acetoso, senior project manager at UNESCO Iraq, said the project aimed "to work in parallel on meaningful monuments for the city and also to bring life back" to Mosul.

"When I arrived here in 2019 it looked like a ghost city," Acetoso said. "In five years plus, there has been a massive change."

- Scars of battle -

After ISIS was defeated, life returned to the city's streets, where the chatter of patrons in small cafes blended with the clatter of construction work at the mosque.

In the coming weeks, Iraqi authorities will inaugurate the restored landmarks.

But Mosul still bears scars from the ferocious fight against ISIS.

Tucked away in narrow old city alleyways are ruined houses. Some bear the word "safe" scrawled in red on walls, signaling that they that have been cleared of explosives.

The crumbling walls and shattered windows tell tales of displacement. Their original owners, mostly Christian, have yet to return.

Mohammed Kassem, 59, came back to the old city a few years ago, to a new house as his former home was just debris.

Mosul still "needs a great deal" of work before it is back to normal, he said.

"It needs its former residents... the Christians to come back. This is their place," Kassem added.

Across the street from Al-Nuri Mosque, Saad Mohammed, 65, said he hoped the restoration efforts will attract visitors to Mosul, although he still feels sad because of what it has lost.

But he couldn't help but smile when he looked up at the minaret from his little shop.

"We opened the window once and saw the black ISIS flag on top of the minaret. Then we opened it again and the minaret was gone," said Mohammed, who never left Mosul, even at the height of the fighting.

"Today the minaret has risen again, alongside the mosque and the churches. Now we feel safe," he said.

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Culture

French Artist Begins Giant ‘Cave’ Art Inflation Over Paris’ Oldest Bridge

People walk along the Seine river next to "The Pont Neuf Cave," an inflated art installation by French street artist JR, on Paris' oldest bridge, the Pont Neuf, Thursday, May 21, 2026, which will be open to the public from June 6-28. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
People walk along the Seine river next to "The Pont Neuf Cave," an inflated art installation by French street artist JR, on Paris' oldest bridge, the Pont Neuf, Thursday, May 21, 2026, which will be open to the public from June 6-28. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
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French Artist Begins Giant ‘Cave’ Art Inflation Over Paris’ Oldest Bridge

People walk along the Seine river next to "The Pont Neuf Cave," an inflated art installation by French street artist JR, on Paris' oldest bridge, the Pont Neuf, Thursday, May 21, 2026, which will be open to the public from June 6-28. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
People walk along the Seine river next to "The Pont Neuf Cave," an inflated art installation by French street artist JR, on Paris' oldest bridge, the Pont Neuf, Thursday, May 21, 2026, which will be open to the public from June 6-28. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)

The oldest bridge in Paris has begun to vanish this week, as the artist JR — who is known as the “French Banksy” — began inflating a giant “cave” over the Pont Neuf.

The monumental, rocky illusion is swallowing the 17th-century landmark, which has carried Parisians across the Seine for more than 400 years. By Thursday, it looked as if a prehistoric cliff had risen in the heart of the city.

The inflation process, which was carried out overnight — after being delayed by bad weather — is the most dramatic stage yet of a project more than a year in the making.

One of the most ambitious public artworks Paris has seen in decades, which has been funded by the sale of JR’s work and a handful of corporate partners, does not open to the public until June 6.

“We’re about to leave something pretty incredible in the middle of Paris,” JR told The Associated Press earlier this year at his studio in the city’s east, wearing his trademark hat and shades.

The transformation of the bridge has been documented by the AP since March with time-lapse cameras, including one fixed on a rooftop terrace high above the river, watching the bridge slowly disappear day by day.

From the outside, the installation looks like a rocky mass that “literally” breaks the landscape, said JR, who is famous for pasting enormous photographs on buildings, walls and rooftops around the world. This time he wanted Parisians to do something unusual on their busiest bridge: stop.

Visitors will be able to walk for free through a long, dark tunnel that lets in no daylight and where, according to JR, people “will lose track of time.”

The numbers are startling. The structure is 120 meters (393 feet) long and 18 meters (59 feet) tall — which is as high as a six-story building.

Yet it is built almost entirely from air — 80 fabric arches filled with 20,000 cubic meters of it — and weighs only about five tons. The fabric was hand stitched by 25 artisans in a village in Brittany.

Nothing digs into the historic stone.

Cut the air and the cliff would sink like a held breath — a collapse JR’s engineers spent weeks rehearsing in a hangar at Orly airport to be sure that if the power ever failed, the rock would come down gently.

The artwork, called La Caverne du Pont Neuf, is a tribute to a Parisian artistic legend.

In 1985, artist Christo and his wife, Jeanne-Claude, wrapped the same bridge in pale golden fabric — 13 kilometers of rope, a decade of arguing with city hall, three million visitors in two weeks. The act helped invent the idea of monumental art in modern cities.

A square beside the bridge now carries their names.

“It’s pretty hard to go after them,” JR said.

His idea, he said, is to bring “mineral and nature” back to the heart of the city. He is not covering the bridge but undressing it — sending the dressed stone back to the limestone quarries from which Paris itself was cut.

The cave is also a warning. JR built it as a nod to Plato’s allegory, in which prisoners mistake shadows on a wall for the real world.

“What are our caves today? Our phones,” he said. “Because we believe that our algorithm on social media is the reality.”

Then he walks straight into the contradiction: to enter his cave about screens, visitors raise their phones.

The tech company Snap has built an augmented-reality layer that shows what the eye cannot.
The sound is a low, mineral hum from Thomas Bangalter, formerly of Daft Punk — who was 10 the year Christo wrapped the bridge.

The cave will be open around the clock from June 6-28, closing the bridge to traffic and visible from the quays, from passing boats, even from the top of the Eiffel Tower.

It will coincide with Paris Fashion Week, World Music Day and the all-night Nuit Blanche arts festival.

When it comes down, the fabric will be reused or recycled. Air, JR likes to say, leaves no scar.
Then, like the golden wrapping 40 years before, the cave will be gone — and the Pont Neuf, older than the republic and older than the revolution, will reappear exactly as it was.

Culture

Winston Churchill's 'Playful' Paintings Go on Show in London

The 'Winston Churchill: The Painter' exhibition opens on Saturday at the Wallace Collection in London. Justin TALLIS / AFP
The 'Winston Churchill: The Painter' exhibition opens on Saturday at the Wallace Collection in London. Justin TALLIS / AFP
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Winston Churchill's 'Playful' Paintings Go on Show in London

The 'Winston Churchill: The Painter' exhibition opens on Saturday at the Wallace Collection in London. Justin TALLIS / AFP
The 'Winston Churchill: The Painter' exhibition opens on Saturday at the Wallace Collection in London. Justin TALLIS / AFP

As Britain's wartime leader, Winston Churchill was known for his stirring speeches, but a new London exhibition explores another side to his creativity -- as a passionate and prolific artist.

The exhibition opening Saturday at the Wallace Collection will be the most significant display of the statesman's paintings for more than 60 years, including over 50 canvases, many of them rarely seen in public.

Churchill first tried painting during World War I after he resigned from the government over the 1915 failed Dardanelles naval attack.

This was a "very difficult time in his life" when "he suddenly finds himself with all this unwanted leisure time", Lucy Davis, co-curator of the exhibition, told AFP.

"And he discovered painting as a way of releasing the stress, the anguish that the situation had caused him."

The museum presents a chronological survey starting with his first paintings, created with advice from renowned artist John Lavery, then canvases painted in the 1920s at Chartwell, the country house where Churchill lived with his family.

Largely self-taught while associating with well-known painters, Churchill quickly became interested in landscape painting and drew inspiration from holidays in the south of France to create brightly colored canvases dominated by blues and ochre.

- 'Loved the light' -

Churchill "saw painting as a spur to travel" and "just loved the light and warmth and atmosphere, which he captures so beautifully", said Davis.

A whole room is dedicated to canvases inspired by trips to Morocco, including "The Tower of the Koutoubia Mosque", the only painting that Churchill did during World War II. A gift to US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the painting recently belonged to Hollywood star Angelina Jolie.

The exhibition ends with the postwar period when Churchill, defeated in a general election, began painting again and continued until his death in 1965, with some of his works going on display at the Royal Academy.

Churchill had previously shown paintings at various galleries, but always under an assumed name.

As a statesman, Churchill went down in history for his wartime leadership, but as an artist, he had little interest in depicting current world events, the curator stressed.

"He was a wartime leader. He was known for these very stirring wartime speeches. But in these paintings, you really see his joie de vivre, his witty side, his playful side."

One painting at the exhibition is an exception: "The Beach At Walmer", painted in 1938 as fears grew of imminent war.

It shows a sandy beach in southern England with bathers paddling. But in the foreground, a black cannon points at the sea, suggesting a looming threat.

Culture

Saudi Heritage Commission Discovers Abbasid-Era Gold Jewelry in Qassim

The Saudi Heritage Commission logo
The Saudi Heritage Commission logo
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Saudi Heritage Commission Discovers Abbasid-Era Gold Jewelry in Qassim

The Saudi Heritage Commission logo
The Saudi Heritage Commission logo

Saudi Arabia’s Heritage Commission announced the discovery of a collection of Abbasid-era gold jewelry at the archaeological site of Diriyyah in Qassim Region during the fourth season of excavation and survey work.

The discovery includes 100 gold pieces adorned with floral and geometric motifs, along with architectural remains from the Abbasid period, including stone foundations, mud walls, pottery, and metal tools.

The findings indicate human settlement dating back to the late third century AH and highlight the site’s historical importance along pilgrimage and trade routes.

The discovery reflects the Heritage Commission’s ongoing efforts to document and preserve the Kingdom’s archaeological heritage, supporting cultural development goals aligned with Saudi Vision 2030.