Hanging Gardens of Babylon

Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

The Hanging Gardens are the most elusive of the ancient wonders. Greek and Roman writers describe a stepped garden of trees and flowers rising on terraces, watered by ingenious machinery, and attribute it to the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II around 600 BCE, supposedly built to comfort a wife homesick for greener lands. Yet no Babylonian text mentions such a garden, and the classical authors wrote centuries after Babylon’s peak, relying on earlier accounts that are now lost. Archaeologists have not found definitive remains. Robert Koldewey, who excavated Babylon in the early twentieth century, proposed a vaulted structure near the palace as a candidate, but that identification is widely doubted. Some scholars suggest the gardens may have belonged to the Assyrian capital Nineveh, near modern Mosul, where Sennacherib created lavish gardens and water systems; others think the descriptions mingle several real parks with legend. The honest summary is that we do not know where the gardens were or whether they existed as described. What visitors can see is Babylon itself, a vast archaeological site inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2019, with excavated brick walls, processional ways and partial reconstructions from the twentieth century. The famous blue-glazed Ishtar Gate was carried to Berlin, where it is exhibited in the Pergamon Museum, and a replica stands at the site. A photograph of Babylon is not a photograph of the gardens.