It is the capital and largest city of Al Anbar Governorate which touches on Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Ramadi occupies a highly strategic site on the Euphrates and the road west into Syria and Jordan.

It was heavily damaged during the Iraq War, when it was a major focus for the insurgency against occupying United States forces.

A settlement already existed in the area when the British explorer Francis Rawdon Chesney passed through in 1836 on a steam-powered boat during an expedition to test the navigability of the Euphrates.

"[10] A British military handbook published during World War I noted that "some European travellers have found the inhabitants of Rumadiyah [Ramadi] inclined to religious fanaticism".

It was held initially by the forces of the Ottoman Empire, which garrisoned it in March 1917 after losing control of Fallujah to the east.

The British Army's Lieutenant General Frederick Stanley Maude sought to drive out the garrison in July 1917 but faced severe difficulties due to exceptional heat during both day and night.

The British mounted their attack from a direction that the Turks had not expected and managed to cut off their enemy's line of retreat.

The coup leader, Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, initiated a siege of the British base at RAF Habbaniya near Ramadi.

[13] The force succeeded in relieving RAF Habbaniya and Iraqi resistance rapidly crumbled as their counter-attacks were defeated,[14] allowing a British column to seize control of Ramadi.

[16] The University of Anbar was founded there in 1987 and, together with Ramadi's trade and transport links, gave the city a more cosmopolitan, liberal and secular culture than others in the Sunni Triangle.

The Anbar tribes in and around the city were largely co-opted to support the regime and Ramadi was the home base of the Iraqi Army's combat engineers, special forces and many active and retired senior officers.

[17] The demonstrations were prompted by Saddam's execution of a prominent member of the Dulaim tribe from Ramadi, Iraqi Air Force General Muhammad Madhlum al-Dulaimi, and three other Dulaimi officers.

The regime's security forces put down the demonstrations which ensued and Saddam subsequently viewed the Dulaimis with suspicion, though he was unable to purge them without risking a full-scale tribal revolt.

This gave them both the motivation and the means, given their connections and technical expertise, to mount a campaign of violence against coalition forces.

On 15 May 2015 Ramadi was captured by ISIS after an assault that included suicide car bombs, mortars, and rocket launchers.

The recapture of Ramadi was backed by US-led coalition air strikes and an Iraqi advance into the city, but made slow progress, mainly due to stiff resistance from ISIS militants inside the southern half of the city and also because the government chose not to use the powerful Shia-dominated paramilitary force PMF that had previously helped it regain the mainly Sunni northern city of Tikrit, to avoid increasing sectarian tensions.

A railway line also runs through the southern outskirts of Ramadi, heading east to Baghdad and west to Haditha and the Syrian border.

The city center is bounded to the north by the Euphrates, to the east by suburbs, to the south by the railway line between Baghdad and Haditha, and to the west by the Habbaniyah Canal.