Every official building or media base these days has a frontage of four-metre (13ft) high concrete walls to protect against bombs and mortars, but Iraqis have begun to see the grey expanse as a public canvas, reports the BBC.

“There is of course graffiti, but mostly great swirling apolitical exuberance – everything from retro-Chagall to prog-rock album-cover teenage fantasies.

[…] Security means glimpses of the art generally have to be snatched through curtained windows of our minivan – but the pattern of current popular expression all over Baghdad seems to be much the same – history or fantasy”.