The city of Kirkuk, 145 km north of Baghdad, lies at the feet of the Zagros mountains in Iraqi Kurdistan and has been tied to oil extraction since 1927. The urban area is characterized by a large tell, produced by the overlapping of stratified settlements since remote times; it is generally believed that the most intense phases of its evolution date back to the Assyrian period. In the Middle Ages it assumed the current configuration of a qal’a, a fortified citadel of the type to which that of the more famous Aleppo, in Syria, belongs.
In 1984, the surviving structures of an ancient church with three naves and colonnades made from local marble were documented. The building, probably abandoned before World War II, displayed a phase of total reconstruction dating back to between the 19th and early 20th century (C. Leopardi, R. Parapetti). With the almost total levelling of the top of the qal’a in the late 1990s, most of the historical buildings, including the church, were definitely destroyed.