BAGHDAD—The city of Baghdad has commissioned artists and craftsmen to restore artworks that have been looted or destroyed since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the Agence France-Presse reports.

A statue of Shahryar, the legendary king of of Samarkand in the Thousand and One Nights, is back on his pedestal overlooking the Tigris River with a new hand replacing the one cut off by looters. Abu Nuwas, an eighth-century poet who extolled the virtues of the vine, will soon once again be holding his favorite bronze wine goblet. And Abu Jaafar al-Mansur, the legendary Abbasid caliph who founded Baghdad, has been re-capitated; a new bronze head replaces the one blasted away in October 2005.

These are but a few of the restoration projects underway in the Iraqi capital to replace works that have been damaged in the chaotic years since the invasion. According to art critic Salah Abbas, "More than 200 works of art disappeared after the invasion of Baghdad in 2003."

Abbas added that approximately 30 of those works were representations of Saddam Hussein, and most of the rest paid tribute to political and military heroes of the deposed regime. Abbas said that there are no plans to repair any of those pieces.

One notable work that is being restored is a monumental mosaic dedicated to peace that was built by Iraqi modernist Faiq Hassan after the 1958 revolution that toppled the Hashemite monarchy; the victim of gunfire, the mosaic has lost many of its colored tiles.

According to Abbas, the destruction of public monuments is par for the course in Iraq. "Whenever a new regime arrives, destroying the [art] of the past is in the soul of Iraqis. It has happened before — after the fall of the monarchy and each time there was a revolution,” he said. “[Iraqis] simply don't understand that all this belongs to the country's artistic heritage."