Famous Landmarks in Amman
A Roman theatre, nymphaeum and citadel hill mark Amman's Philadelphia-era downtown core.
Amman's three catalogued landmarks cluster on and around Citadel Hill in the old downtown, the site of the ancient acropolis when the city was the Roman and later Umayyad settlement of Philadelphia. The Citadel itself spans the longest history, with Bronze Age fortifications overlaid by Roman, Byzantine and Umayyad building; the Temple of Hercules, a Byzantine church and the Umayyad Palace are what remain visible today. Downhill, the Roman Theatre and the Nymphaeum belong to the same 2nd-century building phase, cut and built into limestone slopes a short walk apart, alongside a vanished forum and Odeon. Everything the game shows from Amman predates the Ottoman abandonment and 1878 Circassian resettlement that reshaped the modern city around these ruins.
Amman Citadel
1800 BCE–8th century CE
A broad, L-shaped hilltop platform overlooking the old town below, holding the ruins of a Roman temple, the walls of a Byzantine church, and the remains of an Umayyad palace complex laid out across the same ridge.
The Amman Citadel occupies an L-shaped hilltop that has been fortified since the Bronze Age and served as the capital of the Iron Age Kingdom of Ammon. Successive powers, including the Assyrian, Babylonian, Ptolemaic, Seleucid, Roman, Byzantine and Umayyad empires, built on the site, though the ancient city itself later spread across the surrounding valley while the hill functioned as an acropolis. Most of what survives today, the Temple of Hercules, a Byzantine church and the Umayyad Palace, dates from the Roman through Umayyad centuries. After the Umayyad period the site fell into ruin until Circassian refugees resettled in 1878.
- It is considered one of the world's oldest continuously inhabited places, with evidence of occupation since the Neolithic period.
Photo: David Bjorgen (CC BY 2.5)
Roman Theatre
138
A steeply raked, semicircular bank of stone seating cut into a hillside and built to hold six thousand spectators; it flanks the modern Hashemite Plaza to the south, with the smaller Odeon across the same plaza and the Nymphaeum a short walk to the north-west.
The Roman Theatre is a 6,000-seat theatre built in the 2nd century AD, when Amman was known as the Roman city of Philadelphia. Cut into a hillside in the historic centre, it flanks the modern Hashemite Plaza to the south, with the smaller Odeon theatre across the same plaza to the east. The Nymphaeum, a ruined Roman public fountain, stands a short walk to the north-west. Together the three sites mark the core of Roman-era Philadelphia that survives in modern Amman.
Photo: Bernard Gagnon (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Nymphaeum
191
The partially preserved remains of a monumental Roman fountain beside a dried-up streambed in the old downtown, close to a Roman theatre and the site of the ancient forum, at the crossing of two streets named Ibn al-Atheer and Quraysh.
The Nymphaeum is a partially preserved Roman public fountain built in the late 2nd century AD, when such monumental fountains were common across Roman cities. It stood beside the Seil Amman, a stream that ran through the city until it dried up in the 20th century, close to the Roman Theatre, the Odeon and the city's ancient forum, on the site of the Hashemite Plaza. The fountain is thought to have held a pool of about 600 square metres, three metres deep, continuously refilled with water. It stands at the crossing of Ibn al-Atheer and Quraysh streets in Amman.
Photo: Ken and Nyetta (CC BY 2.0)
History
Settlement here reaches back to the 8th millennium BC at 'Ain Ghazal, but the hill above today's downtown became a capital in the Iron Age, when Rabat Aman ruled the Ammonite Kingdom. Greek conquerors renamed the city Philadelphia in the 3rd century BC, and it passed through Nabataean and Roman hands before the Rashidun Caliphate restored the older name Amman in the 7th century. Prosperity and devastation alternated through the following Islamic centuries, and by the 15th century the city stood largely abandoned; it stayed that way until 1878, when the Ottoman Empire resettled Circassian refugees on the site. A rail connection to the Hejaz line and a first municipal council in 1909 set off renewed growth, which accelerated sharply after Amman became the capital of Transjordan in 1921 and absorbed successive waves of Palestinian, Iraqi and Syrian refugees.