Shabandar Café

On the corner of Mutanabbi Street, the Shabandar Café has been Baghdad's literary living room since 1917 — a photograph-lined hall thick with the smell of tea and tobacco where writers, poets and intellectuals have gathered for over a century. Devastated by a 2007 bombing that killed members of the owner's family, it was lovingly restored and is again the beating heart of the city's book culture.