Nineveh got two books, and they point in opposite directions

In Jonah, Nineveh is the city God refuses to give up on: the reluctant prophet preaches five words, the city repents in sackcloth from king to cattle, and the book ends with God defending his pity for its 120,000 inhabitants. In Nahum, the same city gets a funeral, and the prophet leads the singing: "Nineveh is laid waste! Who will mourn for her?"

Both books are about a real place. Nineveh's mounds still stand across the Tigris from Mosul in Iraq, and one of them has carried the name Nebi Yunus, "prophet Jonah," for centuries. In the seventh century BCE it was the largest city in the world: Sennacherib's "palace without rival," walls miles around, and the library of Ashurbanipal, whose clay tablets now fill museum cases. This was the capital of the empire that erased the northern kingdom of Israel and deported its people. That is the fact sitting under both books: Jonah asks whether God can pity the empire's capital, and Nahum answers what happened when Babylonians and Medes reached it in 612 BCE, so suddenly and completely that within centuries Greek soldiers marched past the mounds without knowing a city was under them.

Where to see it: the British Museum displays the Lachish reliefs, carved for Nineveh's palace walls: an Assyrian siege of a Judahite town, the event of 2 Kings 18:13-14, in stone. Whether or not you can see the reliefs in person, also read Jonah 4:11 and Nahum 3:7 back to back.