Malwiya Spiral Minaret

North of Baghdad sits the old city of Samarra, and in it stands one of the strangest and most wonderful minarets ever built: the Malwiya, which means 'the twisted one'.

Instead of a normal tower with stairs inside, the Malwiya is a giant cone with the staircase wrapped around the outside, spiralling up and up for 52 metres — about as tall as a 17-storey building.

It belonged to the Great Mosque of Samarra, which was once the largest mosque in the world. Thousands of worshippers filled its courtyard when Samarra was the capital of the Abbasid caliphate.

The whole thing is made from baked mud bricks, the same simple material villagers used for their homes — proof that amazing things can be built from ordinary stuff.

Today most of the mosque walls are gone, but the spiral still stands in the sun, and climbing it feels like walking up a mountain path made by human hands.