Erbil Citadel is a for­ti­fied set­tle­ment on top of an impos­ing ovoid-shaped tell (a hill cre­at­ed by many gen­er­a­tions of peo­ple liv­ing and rebuild­ing on the same spot) in the Kur­dis­tan region, Erbil Gov­er­norate. A con­tin­u­ous wall of tall 19th-cen­­tu­ry facades still con­veys the visu­al impres­sion of an impreg­nable fortress, dom­i­nat­ing the city of Erbil. The citadel fea­tures a pecu­liar fan-like pat­tern dat­ing back to Erbil‘s late Ottoman phase. Writ­ten and icono­graph­ic his­tor­i­cal records doc­u­ment the antiq­ui­ty of set­tle­ment on the site — Erbil cor­re­sponds to ancient Arbela, an impor­tant Assyr­i­an polit­i­cal and reli­gious cen­tre — while archae­o­log­i­cal finds and inves­ti­ga­tions sug­gest that the mound con­ceals the lev­els and remains of pre­vi­ous set­tle­ments.