"MAXXI Museum in Rome"

Zaha Hadid, the Iraqi-born architect who has lived for some four decades in the U.K., finally won recognition from her country of adoption as she clinched the U.K.’s RIBA Stirling Prize for her MAXXI Museum in Rome.

British acclaim had so far evaded Hadid, 59, who in 2004 became the first woman to win the Pritzker Prize for Architecture, her profession’s highest distinction. She had been nominated three other times for the Stirling, the U.K.’s top architecture award.