The Ishtar Gate was the eighth and most ornate gate of Nebuchadnezzar II's inner city wall, completed around 575 BC and dedicated to the goddess of love and war. It was finished in deep blue glazed bricks and decorated with rows of dragons (the symbol of Marduk) and bulls (the symbol of Adad), striding in low relief along the gate and the processional way leading up to it.
The reconstruction on site gives a sense of scale — a single arch of brilliant blue, with the relief animals picked out in cream and ochre. To see the originals you have to travel to Berlin, where the full double gate was rebuilt inside the Pergamon Museum in the 1930s. A handful of original bricks and reliefs are also in the Iraq Museum in Baghdad.