Qasr Al-Mshatta

About

Qasr al-Mshatta was commissioned by Caliph Al-Walid II in 743 as a lavish winter palace, but never completed - workers assassinated the Caliph on the site in 744. Even if the following rulers continued construction, when the Abbasid dynasty came to power in 750, the capital was moved to Baghdad and Qasr al-Mshatta was left abandoned. In 1903, the Ottoman Sultan Abd al Hamid of Turkey bestowed the palace’s impossibly intricate facade to Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany - and is now on display in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. Despite this, the remaining carvings of floral, animal, and geometric motifs, allude to the palace’s intended grandeur. Keep an eye out for the wall with no animal carvings on it - this “qibla wall” faces Mecca and abuts the remains of the palace mosque. Another notable feature of the palace are its toilets with drains - a technology that wouldn’t be used in Europe for several centuries.