The Hanging Gardens were the most poetic of the Seven Wonders — a series of terraced gardens, supposedly built by Nebuchadnezzar II for his Median wife Amytis, who missed the green mountains of her homeland. Greek and Roman writers described tiered platforms planted with trees and shrubs, watered by a clever system that drew the Euphrates up to the highest level.
Nothing of the gardens survives — if they ever existed. Excavators have proposed several possible locations within the ruins, including a vaulted underground structure near the southern palace and a complex of cellars beside the river. The site shown to visitors is conjectural, but standing here it is easy to imagine the cool of irrigated foliage rising above the Mesopotamian flat.