The discovery of a 12th-century prayer hall beneath Mosul’s Al-Nuri mosque and feedback from the local community have prompted a sea change in designs for the monument’s reconstruction, five years after it was destroyed by Isis extremists. On a recent tour of the site, which is being rebuilt by Unesco in partnership with the United Arab Emirates and the Iraqi authorities, the UN agency’s senior project manager Maria Rita Acetoso said: “A monument never stops telling you its story.”

During excavations, archaeologists uncovered the foundations of an ancient prayer hall and the remains of four rooms believed to have been used for ritual ablutions. “These rooms that go back to the 12th-century Atabeg era were completely buried and were not mentioned in the historical sources and books,” said Khaireddine Nasser, the director of the Department of Antiquities and Heritage in Nineveh, in a statement.

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