Four days in Amman: the city most people drive straight through

Three nights on the hills of the capital, a Roman theatre wedged into downtown, a whole day out at Jerash, and the mosaic map at Madaba on the way to the airport.

Copy this itinerary
Length
4 days, 3 nights
Where you stay
Amman
Places
10 across 4 days
OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles Data from OpenStreetMap

Amman is where almost every trip to Jordan starts and where almost nobody stays. The standard plan is a night at an airport hotel and a car south at dawn, which skips a city of four million people spread over a couple of dozen hills, with a Roman theatre in the middle of the traffic and a museum nobody expects.

It is not a beautiful city in the picture postcard sense. It is beige, steep and built almost entirely since the 1920s, when it was a village of a few thousand people. What it has instead is downtown Amman at dusk, a coffee culture that runs late, hills full of galleries and small restaurants, and two of the finest Roman and Byzantine sites in the region within an hour's drive.

Three nights gives you the city, the ruined Roman town at Jerash, and the mosaics of Madaba on the way out, because the airport happens to be on that road.

Highlights

  • The citadel at the top of the town, where four thousand years of fortification share one windy hilltop above the traffic
  • Two plaster statues from Ain Ghazal, made nine thousand years ago and among the oldest large sculptures of the human figure anywhere
  • Jerash, a Roman provincial city with its colonnaded main street, its fountains and its plumbing still legible on the ground
  • The sixth century mosaic floor map at Madaba, laid before anyone drew the Holy Land on paper

Where to stay

Amman, three nights

One hotel for three nights, in Jabal Amman if you can. The city's own sights take a day and a half, the Jerash trip takes a full day, and the last morning is spent driving south to the airport with two stops on the way.

Amman rewards evenings more than mornings. The temperature drops, the hills light up, the cafes on Rainbow Street fill, and downtown turns into a very good place to walk with an ice cream.

Day by day

Day 1 in Amman

Downtown, the Roman theatre and Rainbow Street

Get down into the Balad on the first afternoon. Amman sits in a bowl with the old town at the bottom of it, and everything in the centre is a short and steep walk from everything else.

The theatre is the obvious first stop because it is impossible to miss: a Roman auditorium cut into a hillside with a modern city built up to its edges and the traffic circling it.

Then climb to Jabal Amman for the evening, which is where the city goes out.

  1. 16:00

    Roman Theater

    Historic

    Cut into the north facing slope so the audience sat in shade, this seats six thousand and was built when the city was the Roman Philadelphia, under Antoninus Pius in the middle of the second century. Climb to the top row: the view down into the bowl of downtown is the best free thing in Amman, and the acoustics from the stage still work.

  2. 18:00

    Rainbow Street

    Other

    The spine of Jabal Amman, running from the first circle along the ridge, lined with cafes, bookshops, a good ice cream place and the stairs down into the old town. Come at six when it fills up, and on a summer Friday morning there is a street market along it.

  3. 20:00

    Dinner in Jabal Amman

    Eat

    Mezze and grilled meat on a terrace, or one of the modern Jordanian kitchens on the side streets off the ridge. Book at the well known ones on a Thursday night.

With more time: The old souq in the streets below, spices and gold and vegetables in about that order, is at its best in the hour before sunset. The old coffee houses on the roofs above it have been serving tea, backgammon and hookah to the same customers for decades and will happily add you to them.

Day 2 in Amman

The citadel, nine thousand year old statues, and the galleries

The hilltop above the theatre has been fortified for about four thousand years, and the sequence of who held it is laid out on one flat plateau: an Ammonite wall, a Roman temple with two columns left standing, a Byzantine church, and the audience hall of an Umayyad governor with a rebuilt dome you can walk inside.

Go up early for the light and the temperature. It is a stiff climb from downtown, so take a taxi up and walk down.

The afternoon is the national museum at the bottom of the same hill, which is where the important finds from the whole country have been gathered, and then a gallery in three old villas on the next hill along.

  1. 08:30

    Amman Citadel

    Nature

    One hilltop with four thousand years stacked on it. The two standing columns belong to a temple of the Roman period, next to which lies a marble hand from a statue that must have been thirteen metres tall. The domed hall of the eighth century governor's complex is the most complete building up here, and the terrace at the edge looks straight down into the Roman theatre.

  2. 13:00

    The Jordan Museum

    Historic

    The best museum in Jordan and the reason to give Amman a proper day. The Ain Ghazal statues, plaster figures with bitumen eyes made around 7000 BC in a village just outside the modern city, are among the earliest large representations of people anywhere. The copper scroll from Qumran, a treasure list hammered into metal rather than written on parchment, is here too.

  3. 16:00

    Darat al Funun

    Visit

    Three restored 1920s villas on the side of Jabal al Weibdeh, run as a contemporary art foundation, with terraced gardens, a small library and the excavated apse of a sixth century church at the bottom of the garden. Free, quiet, and the best coffee terrace in the city.

With more time: The white mosque with the blue dome on the western ridge is open to non Muslim visitors outside prayer times, with robes lent at the door, and it is the only mosque in Amman that admits them. The car museum out at the sports city holds the royal collection, which runs from a 1916 Cadillac to the rover from a film shot in Wadi Rum.

Day 3 in Amman

A full day at Jerash

Jerash is fifty minutes north of Amman and it is the reason people say Jordan has better Roman ruins than Italy. It is not a single monument but a whole provincial city: a triumphal arch, a chariot track, an oval forum, a kilometre of colonnaded street with the chariot ruts still in the paving, temples, theatres and a set of fountains fed by an aqueduct.

Go early. The site is enormous, there is very little shade, and by eleven in summer the stone is throwing heat back at you. Four hours is the minimum and six is easy.

Take a taxi with a driver who waits, or the minibus from the northern station. Either way, come back to Amman for dinner rather than eating at the site.

  1. 08:30

    Hadrian's Arch

    Visit

    The triple arch at the southern entrance went up in 129 AD for a visit by the emperor Hadrian, half a kilometre outside the actual city gate, in the confident expectation that Jerash would grow out to meet it. It never did. Walk from here rather than driving to the upper gate: arriving on foot is the whole effect.

  2. 09:30

    Oval Plaza

    Visit

    An enormous asymmetric oval of paving ringed by columns, unlike anything else in the Roman world, laid out in the first century to join the main street to the temple hill at an awkward angle. Stand in the middle of it early and you will have it to yourself.

  3. 11:30

    Temple of Artemis

    Religious

    The temple of the city's patron goddess sits at the top of a monumental staircase, and eleven of its columns are still standing. Push a key or a fingernail into the joint at the base of one: they were seated on lead pads to absorb earthquakes and they still visibly rock in the wind.

  4. 15:00

    Late lunch back in Amman

    Eat

    Eat at the site only if you must. Better to drive back and have a proper mansaf lunch in the city at three, which is roughly when Jordanians eat it anyway.

With more time: The colonnaded main street runs six hundred metres from the oval to the north gate and the ruts worn by cart wheels are still in the flagstones, with the manhole covers of the Roman drain underneath at regular intervals. The larger theatre near the south gate has a resident pair of bagpipers, a habit inherited from the British era army, and hearing them in a Roman auditorium is stranger and better than it sounds.

Day 4 in Amman

The mosaic map, Moses' viewpoint, and the airport

Queen Alia Airport sits south of the city on the Madaba road, which means the last morning can be spent on the two best things in that direction rather than in a hotel lobby.

Madaba is half an hour from Amman and full of Byzantine mosaic floors, one of which is famous. Mount Nebo is another twenty minutes west, at the edge of the plateau, looking out over the Jordan valley and the Dead Sea.

Take a taxi for the morning, agree a price that ends at the airport, and keep the bags in the boot.

  1. 09:00

    Basilica of St. George (Church of the Map)

    Visit

    Under the floor of a nineteenth century Greek Orthodox church lies the oldest surviving map of this part of the world: a mosaic laid around 560 AD showing Jerusalem in detail, with its colonnaded main street, walls and gates, along with the Dead Sea, the Nile delta and a fleet of boats. What is left is a fraction of the original and it is still the single most useful object for understanding Byzantine Palestine.

  2. 11:00

    Mount Nebo

    Nature

    The ridge where Moses is said to have been shown the land he would not enter, and on a clear morning you can see the Jordan valley, the Dead Sea, Jericho and the hills of Jerusalem from the terrace. The church at the top shelters a superb sixth century hunting and herding mosaic, and outside stands a modern bronze of a serpent on a staff.

  3. 13:00

    On to Queen Alia Airport

    Travel

    Half an hour from Madaba, and the road passes the airport rather than doubling back to Amman. Allow three hours before an international flight.

With more time: Madaba has more mosaics than the one everybody comes for, including an archaeological park built over the floors of several Byzantine churches, and it makes a pleasant overnight stop in its own right if you are driving south to Petra rather than flying home.

Before you go

Buy the Jordan Pass before you fly

The Jordan Pass is bought online before arrival, waives the tourist visa fee if you stay at least three nights, and covers entry to Petra plus around forty other sites, Jerash and the Amman hilltop among them. It pays for itself the moment Petra is on your list and it is a nuisance to arrange afterwards, because the visa waiver only works if you buy it before you land.

Madaba's churches and Mount Nebo are run by the church rather than the state and charge separately, so keep some cash for them.

Where to stay

Jabal Amman, around the first and second circles and Rainbow Street, is the best base: walkable, full of cafes and small restaurants, and downhill from most of them. Jabal al Weibdeh next door is quieter, more residential and has the galleries.

Downtown, the Balad, is where the cheap hotels are, and it puts you next to the theatre and the souq at the cost of noise. Anything out towards Abdoun or the sixth circle is comfortable, expensive and means a taxi every time you want dinner.

Getting around

Amman is hilly enough that a two hundred metre walk on a map can involve four flights of stairs. Taxis are cheap and everywhere, ride hailing apps work well and remove the argument about the meter, and both are the sensible default.

The city has a bus rapid transit network that is useful along the main corridors, and minibuses from the northern and southern stations for out of town trips. Jerash is served from the north bus station; a taxi with a driver waiting for the day costs more and saves two hours.

Queen Alia Airport is about thirty five kilometres south, with an hourly express bus from the north of the city and taxis at a fixed rate. Madaba is on the same road, which is why the last morning works the way it does.

Friday is the day off. Shops and the souq are shut in the morning and open again after midday prayers, while the archaeological sites keep normal hours.

Eating and drinking

Eat mansaf at least once: lamb cooked in fermented dried yoghurt, served over rice and flatbread, and the national dish in a way that is taken seriously. It is a lunch rather than a light supper.

Downtown does the cheap classics, falafel and hummus for breakfast, kunafa in the middle of the afternoon, and shawarma at any hour. Jabal Amman and Weibdeh have the modern Jordanian cooking and most of the places that serve alcohol.

Coffee comes cardamom heavy and in small cups, and refusing a third one takes practice.

Amman is a city that people write off before they have walked down into it. Give it three nights and it turns out to have the country's best museum, its most surprising hilltop, a genuine evening culture and two of the great archaeological sites of the Roman east on its doorstep.

Then drive south, because Petra is three hours away and everything from here on is desert.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

Copy to my trips

Common questions

Is Amman worth three nights, or should I go straight to Petra?
Three nights is worth it if Jerash and Madaba are on your list, which they should be: both are day trips from Amman and neither is close to anything else. If your trip is short and Petra is the point, two nights here is enough to see the citadel, the museum and Jerash, and you can pick up Madaba on the drive south.
How do I get to Jerash without a car?
Minibuses run from the northern bus station and take about an hour and a half, dropping you a short walk from the site. A taxi hired for the day is roughly the price of a restaurant dinner, saves the waiting, and can add the crusader castle at Ajloun on the way back.
Do I need the Jordan Pass if I am only in Amman?
Only if you stay three nights or more, in which case it waives the visa fee and covers the citadel, the theatre, Jerash and much else. Buy it online before you fly, because the visa waiver does not work retrospectively.
Is Friday a bad day to arrive?
No, but plan around it. The souq and many shops close for Friday prayers and reopen in the afternoon, restaurants stay open, and the archaeological sites run normal hours. It is the quietest morning of the week to be at the citadel.
Can I change these days around?
Copy it into the planner and reorder as you like. The one fixed piece is the last morning, which only works because Madaba, Mount Nebo and the airport are on the same road south.