Jordan’s capital doesn’t normally make it to the top of anyone’s bucket list. The city of Amman isn’t anything special, and to be painfully honest, the entire country is kind of the same way. For the majority of Western travelers, a trip to Jordan is little more than an add-on to their Holy Land pilgrimages, with day trips to religious sites like the Dead Sea or Mount Nebo filling out empty spaces in the itinerary. While the truly adventurous might brave a four-hour bus trip across the desert to visit Petra, the ancient, sprawling red rock city of the Nabateeans, these days a lot of people are finding themselves in Amman for a brief stopover en route to more remote (or more dangerous) destinations in the Middle East.
The traveling circus that pays my bills has routed me through Amman at least a dozen times, so I’ve got some experience with filling blocks of time in that city. And to be fair, there are a number of mildly interesting things to do, from browsing the curbside vendors along Rainbow Street to hunting down an iced Starbucks Frappuccino in the Mecca Mall food court. But for me, at least, whenever I found myself in Amman with time to kill, I’d make a point to go explore the city’s ancient ruins.
See, several thousand years ago, when both the Greek and Roman empires stretched out through the Levant and into northern Africa, the city of Amman was named Philadelphia. Over the centuries, as the sprawling city grew out in all directions, many of these old buildings were left untouched. The central traffic circle of Hashemite Square, with its non-stop snarls of taxis and minibuses, coexists right alongside the massive Forum amphitheater, where the 6000 or so open-air seats are still being put to good use during concerts and performances today.
While the Forum might be Amman’s most famous example of Roman architecture, in my opinion, you can’t beat a visit to the ancient Citadel. The strenuous hike affords the best views of the rolling hills surrounding the city, but the real treasures here are the ancient ruins, which have been in a continual state of excavation for over a hundred years. A number of artifacts are on display in a modest museum, although the best part of the experience comes from walking freely throughout the site. The Citadel was occupied throughout the Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Ummayid periods, so the buildings almost seem like they were constructed on top of themselves.
From my own amateur perspective, the crown jewel in this treasure hoard has to be the Temple of Hercules. Inscriptions state that this shrine was erected between 162-166 AD, although only a few tall columns remain standing. Most historians believe that the temple was never fully completed, and that any remaining marble bricks would have been carted away for use in nearby buildings. Had it been finished, though, the Citadel’s Temple of Hercules would have dwarfed any temple found in Rome during the same era.
In fact, the most visible reminder of the temple’s massive scale lies on the ground nearby, where a waist-high chunk of marble is intricately carved into a set of fingers. Just beyond that, a second large block is shaped into a human elbow. This pair of remnants is all that remains of a massive statue of the god Hercules, which was most likely laid low by an earthquake. After measuring these body parts in proportion to an average human, sculptors and archaeologists agreed that the marble statue would have towered over 42 feet high, standing watch over the city below.
During my last visit to the Citadel, time seemed to fly by. As I walked back down the hill, stepping across broken sidewalks and picking a path back to my hotel, the sun set quietly behind me, the exact same way it’d been doing for thousands of years.
Because even though I was a man on the move, hustling off to the next destination, that ancient city never seemed like it was in any kind of big hurry to change.