Camp Bucca, a military installation in southern Iraq where tens of thousands of detainees were once held by the US military, was transferred to Iraqi control on Wednesday.
The US flag was lowered and the Iraqi flag raised in a ceremony marking the handover of the installation, which ceased to house detainees in 2009.
"It is a happy day for Iraq because it takes back its land," Sheltagh Abud, the governor of Basra province, said at the ceremony.
"We will transform it into a commercial area in order to develop Basra," Abud said.
The United States officially ended its combat operations in Iraq on August 31.
Some 50,000 US troops remain in the country, seven years after the US invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, and are mostly engaged in training and advising Iraqi security forces.
A security accord between Baghdad and Washington requires all American troops to be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of 2011.
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