Amman: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
Amman was a village of about two thousand people in 1900. Circassian refugees from the Caucasus were settled here by the Ottomans in 1878, the Hejaz railway reached it in 1903, and Abdullah the First made it his capital in 1921 — after which it grew from a village to four million people in a century. The town originally covered seven hills and now covers about nineteen, which is why addresses here are given by circle number and why every walk is uphill in one direction. Three hours, steep in places, and the downtown shuts on Friday morning for prayers.
A short history of Amman
People were already living on Amman's Citadel Hill in the Neolithic period, and in the Bible it is called Rabbah of the Ammonites. Uriah the Hittite fell at its walls when Joab besieged the city in the days of King David. In the 3rd century BC Ptolemy II named it Philadelphia, after his own epithet, and in the 2nd century AD the Romans built a theatre for 6,000 spectators, which still stands in the city centre. After the Arab conquest Amman remained a small village for centuries. In 1878 Circassians settled here, and in 1921 it became the capital of the Emirate of Transjordan. Since then it has grown enormously, partly because of the waves of refugees in 1948 and 1967.
The ten best sights in Amman
1Amman Citadel3 dinars, on the highest hill, and the view explains the whole city
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2Temple of Hercules
Inside the citadel, and the stone hand beside it was part of a giant statue
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3Umayyad Palace
Inside the citadel, the domed hall is a reconstruction, and it is from about 730
4Jordan Archaeological MuseumIncluded in the citadel ticket, small, and the Ain Ghazal copies are here
5Roman Theatre3 dinars, 6,000 seats, built into the north slope for shade, and still used
6OdeonFree, 500 seats beside the big theatre, and it was the roofed one
7NymphaeumFree, a Roman public fountain still being excavated, and easy to walk past
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8Jordan Museum
5 dinars, closed Tuesday, and the Ain Ghazal statues are 9,000 years old
9King Abdullah I Mosque2 dinars for visitors, the blue dome is 35 metres across, and abayas are lent
10King Hussein MosqueDowntown, from outside outside prayer times, and it stands on an older mosque
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What is an audio walk?
Tours in Amman →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Amman:
Free walking tours in Amman
Seven hills and a Roman theatre
Amman was a village of about two thousand people in 1900. Circassian refugees from the Caucasus were settled here by the Ottomans in 1878, the Hejaz railway reached it in 1903, and Abdullah the First made it his capital in 1921 — after which it grew from a village to four million people in a century. The town originally covered seven hills and now covers about nineteen, which is why addresses here are given by circle number and why every walk is uphill in one direction. Three hours, steep in places, and the downtown shuts on Friday morning for prayers.
- Amman Citadel · This hill has been occupied more or less continuously for about seven thousand years, and the layers on it run Bronze Age, Ammonite, Roman, Byzantine and Umayyad on top of each other. The Ammonite kingdom whose capital this was is the one named in the Hebrew Bible as Rabbath Ammon, and the modern name Amman comes directly from it.
- Temple of Hercules · Built under Marcus Aurelius in the 160s, and it was never finished — the columns were raised but the roof was not completed, which excavators could tell from the unused drums left on the ground. Beside it are three fragments of a marble hand: an elbow, a hand and part of an arm. From the proportions, the statue they came from stood around twelve metres tall.
- Umayyad Palace · Built around 730, when Amman was a provincial administrative centre of the Umayyad caliphate, and the domed audience hall at the entrance is laid out as a cross inside a square — a Byzantine church plan used for an Islamic palace, because the builders were local Christian craftsmen working to a Muslim client. The dome you see is a 1990s reconstruction.
- Roman Theatre · Six thousand seats, cut into the north-facing slope of the hill — deliberately, so that the audience sat in shade for most of the day. It was built in the second century when the city was called Philadelphia, after Ptolemy the Second Philadelphus, and that name lasted longer than the Roman empire did here. It is still used for concerts, and the acoustics work from the top row.
- Nymphaeum · A Roman public fountain from about 191, and it was fed by a stream that ran through the middle of the city — the Sail, which was covered over and turned into the main road in the 1960s. So the valley you are standing in was a watercourse, and the reason the old town is here at all is the water that is now in a culvert under your feet.
- Al Balad · The old downtown is a single valley floor with the hills rising on both sides, and everything in it is a market: gold on one street, spices on another, used clothes on a third. The pavements are narrow because the road was widened over the stream, and on Friday morning the whole area empties for prayers and reopens at about two.
The hills people actually live on
West of the downtown the city climbs onto two hills that were built in the 1920s and 1930s for the new administrative class — stone villas with arched windows, courtyards and staircases cut between them. Jabal Amman and Jabal Lweibdeh are now where the galleries, the cafés and the only genuinely walkable streets in the city are, and the staircases between the levels are public rights of way that most visitors never find. Two and a half hours, uphill and downhill continuously, and Friday evening is when the street fills.
- Rainbow Street · The street is named after the Rainbow Cinema, which opened here in the 1950s and is gone. It was a quiet residential road until the municipality pedestrianised parts of it in 2006, and it is now the one street in Amman where people walk for the sake of walking. At the east end the view drops straight down into the downtown valley.
- Duke’s Diwan · A house built in 1924 that has been, in order, the post office, the finance ministry, a hotel and a private cultural salon — and it is the oldest surviving building on the main downtown street. It is kept open by one man, free, with the original tiled floors and shuttered windows, and whoever is there will walk you through the rooms.
- First Circle · Amman has no street-name culture: the city is navigated by eight numbered roundabouts along one ridge road, and an address is given as the circle plus a landmark. The first is the oldest and the smallest. Taxi drivers will know the circle and the building; they will often not know the street name, and the municipality only put up street signs in the 2000s.
- Wild Jordan Center · This is the headquarters of the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature, which runs Jordan’s nature reserves as businesses — the lodges, the guides and the handicraft workshops are all meant to fund the reserves and employ the people living in them. The trips to Dana, Mujib and Ajloun are booked here, and the terrace at the back is the best free view in the city.
- Paris Circle · The centre of Jabal Lweibdeh, which was the first planned residential quarter outside the downtown and was built largely by Christian and Circassian families in the 1920s. It still has the highest concentration of pre-1950 houses in Amman, and because the hill was never commercially redeveloped the scale of the streets is domestic rather than municipal.
- Darat al Funun · Three 1920s villas on a terraced slope, turned into a contemporary art centre in 1993 — and in the garden below the lowest house are the excavated remains of a sixth-century Byzantine church, left open. One of the villas was where the British officer Frederick Peake, who founded the Arab Legion, lived.
Mosaics, a mountain and the lowest water on earth
South-west of Amman the land drops from about eight hundred metres to four hundred and thirty below sea level in roughly fifty kilometres, and the three things worth seeing are strung along that descent: a town that has been making floor mosaics since the sixth century, the ridge from which the Jordan valley is laid out in front of you, and the Dead Sea itself. A full day and a car, start at eight, and the sea is fifteen degrees hotter than the city.
- Madaba · A town of about sixty thousand that is roughly a third Christian, and it has been making mosaics without interruption since the Byzantine period — there is a mosaic school here that trains restorers for the whole region. The reason there are so many is that Madaba was abandoned for about eleven hundred years and resettled in 1880, so the floors lay undisturbed under the rubble.
- St George’s Church · The floor of this church carries a map of the Holy Land made in about 560, with Jerusalem shown from above in enough detail that archaeologists used it to find the Cardo and the Nea church. It is the oldest surviving map of the region, it was built as a floor to be walked on, and about a quarter of it survives — the rest was destroyed when a new church was built over it in 1884 before anyone realised what it was.
- Mount Nebo · The ridge from which, in the biblical account, Moses saw the land he would not enter. What is certain is the view: on a clear morning the Jordan valley, the Dead Sea, Jericho and the hills of Jerusalem are all visible from one spot. The Byzantine church on the summit has a mosaic floor from 530 showing hunting and animals, and the site has been in Franciscan hands since 1932.
- Bethany Beyond the Jordan · The Jordan river has moved since the first century, so what is here is not the bank but the place the river used to run: an excavated channel, a set of Byzantine churches built in stages as the water shifted, and marble steps leading down into what is now dry ground. Access is by compulsory shuttle because the area was a closed military zone until 1994 and parts are still mined.
- Dead Sea · Four hundred and thirty metres below sea level and dropping about a metre a year. The water is around ten times saltier than the ocean, which is why you float — but the practical rules are strict: do not shave that morning, do not put your face in it, and rinse immediately, because the magnesium chloride burns any broken skin. The Jordanian beaches are less developed and cheaper than the Israeli side.
- Umm ar-Rasas · A Unesco site with almost no visitors, and the reason to come is one mosaic floor: the church of St Stephen, laid in 785, with panels naming fifteen cities on both banks of the Jordan — and it was made under Islamic rule, more than a century after the conquest, which is direct evidence that Christian communities kept building here. There are also two stylite towers nearby, where monks lived on top.
Getting to Amman and getting around
- Queen Alia Airport · 35 kilometres south, the airport bus is 4.5 dinars, and taxis are metered
- Abdali · Minibuses north to Jerash and Ajloun leave from here when full
- Tabarbour station · The northern terminal, and this is where the Syria and Iraq routes used to start
Cheap eats in Amman
Jordan’s national dish is mansaf — lamb cooked in fermented dried yoghurt, served on rice and flatbread, eaten with the right hand from a shared tray — and it is a hospitality dish, not a counter dish. What you buy standing is the Levantine layer underneath: falafel, hummus with warm chickpeas, foul, and knafeh, which here is a pastry of soft white cheese under shredded dough soaked in syrup, cut by weight. A full plate is two to four dinars, and nothing anywhere opens on Friday morning.
- Hashem · Under 3 dinars for two, cash, and open all night
- Habibah · About 2 dinars for half a kilo, standing, and cash
- Al Quds · About 4 dinars, downtown, and the mansaf is served at lunch on Friday
- Abu Jbara · About 3 dinars, a chain now, and the fatteh is the thing to order
- Shams El Balad · About 15 dinars for two, and closed Monday
- Sufra · About 20 dinars a head, Jordanian cooking in a 1930s villa, and book ahead
- Rakwet Arab · About 5 dinars, a Lweibdeh café with a courtyard, and open till midnight
- Downtown market · Fruit, nuts and spices by weight from six, and bargaining is normal
Museums in Amman
Jordan holds a disproportionate amount of early human material, because the Jordan valley is one of the routes out of Africa and because the dry climate preserves things. The one object to come for is in the Jordan Museum: a pair of plaster statues from Ain Ghazal, about nine thousand years old, which are among the oldest representations of the human figure ever found anywhere. Most museums close on Tuesday.
- Jordan Museum · 5 dinars, closed Tuesday, and two hours is enough
- Jordan Archaeological Museum · Included in the citadel ticket, one room, and the Ammonite statues are here
- Jordan Folklore Museum · 2 dinars, inside the Roman theatre, and the costumes are by region
- National Gallery of Fine Arts · 5 dinars, closed Tuesday, and the park between the wings is free
- Darat al Funun · Free, three 1920s villas and a Byzantine church in the garden
- Royal Automobile Museum · 3 dinars, in King Hussein Park, and closed Tuesday
- Duke’s Diwan · Free, a 1924 house, and the oldest building on the main street
- Royal Tank Museum · 5 dinars, about 110 vehicles indoors, and it is better than it sounds
Nature and day trips near Amman
Jordan fits four climate zones into a country the size of Portugal: Mediterranean oak forest in the north, steppe, the rift valley at four hundred metres below sea level, and basalt desert in the east. The nature reserves are run as businesses by a conservation society that employs people from the villages inside them, and most of them must be booked in advance — you cannot simply turn up. From June to September the valley floor is unusable in the middle of the day.
- Dead Sea · 55 kilometres west, a public beach is about 25 dinars, and rinse at once
- Wadi Mujib · 21 dinars, April to October, and booked in advance
- Ajloun Castle · 3 dinars, 70 kilometres north, and the forest around it is oak
- Azraq Wetland · 8 dinars, 100 kilometres east, and the birds pass in spring
- Qasr Azraq · Free, black basalt, and Lawrence used it as a headquarters in the winter of 1917
- Umm Qais · 3 dinars, Roman Gadara in black basalt, and three countries are visible
- King Hussein Park · Free, the city’s big park, and the two museums are inside it
- Iraq al-Amir · Free, a Hellenistic palace in a green valley, and a women’s craft co-operative beside it
Things to do in Amman with kids
- Children’s Museum · 3 dinars, hands-on across two floors, and closed Tuesday
- Roman Theatre · 3 dinars, 6,000 seats to climb, and the top row is steep
- Amman Citadel · 3 dinars, open ground and real ruins, and no railings — hold hands
- King Hussein Park · Free, lawns, bikes to hire, and both museums are in it
- Royal Automobile Museum · 3 dinars, 70 cars and motorcycles, and an hour is enough
- Dead Sea · Floating works for children too, but keep it out of eyes and mouths
- Jerash · 10 dinars, a whole Roman city to run around, and the hippodrome has a show
- Hussein Gardens · Free, shade and playgrounds on the west side, and busiest at five
Holy places in Amman
About ninety-five per cent of Jordanians are Sunni Muslim and about two per cent Christian, and the Christian communities here are old — not converts but continuous congregations, Greek Orthodox and Catholic, with their own villages. The country also holds four sites that matter to Christianity: the baptism site, Mount Nebo, Madaba and Mukawir. Mosques admit visitors outside prayer times and lend robes at the door.
- King Abdullah I Mosque · 2 dinars, outside prayer times, and a robe is provided
- Abu Darwish Mosque · From outside, on Jabal Ashrafieh, and the climb is steep
- King Hussein Mosque · In the downtown, rebuilt in 1924 on an Umayyad mosque, and from outside
- St George’s Church, Madaba · 3 dinars, the sixth-century floor map, and it is a working parish church
- Mount Nebo · 3 dinars, Franciscan since 1932, and the mosaic floor is from 530
- Bethany Beyond the Jordan · 12 dinars with the compulsory shuttle, and a guide goes with you
- Mukawir · Free, Herod’s hilltop fort, a 20-minute climb, and no shade
- Umm ar-Rasas · 3 dinars, a mosaic floor laid in 785 under Islamic rule, and two stylite towers
Nightlife in Amman
Alcohol is legal in Jordan and sold in licensed restaurants, hotels and some shops, but there is no bar culture on the street and the drinking is concentrated in two hills — Jabal Amman and Lweibdeh — plus the new Abdali district. A beer is five to eight dinars. Friday is the day off, so Thursday night is the big one; the downtown closes early and the hills close around one.
- Rainbow Street · The cafés and rooftops, busiest on Thursday and Friday night
- Books@cafe · A beer is about 6 dinars, open till one, and the roof is the place
- Paris Circle · The Lweibdeh cafés, quieter, and most close at midnight
- Rakwet Arab · A courtyard, shisha and cards, and no alcohol
- Abdali Boulevard · The new district, licensed bars, and open till two
- Souk Jara · Friday evenings from May to September, a craft market with music
- Al Pasha Turkish Bath · From 25 dinars, open till midnight, and separate hours for men and women
- Roman Theatre at night · Lit after dark, and the summer festival uses it for concerts
Frequently asked questions about Amman
What is there to see in Amman?
The top sights in Amman are Amman Citadel, Temple of Hercules and Umayyad Palace. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Amman?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Amman without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Amman?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Amman, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: Seven hills and a Roman theatre.
How do you get to Amman and get around?
The main ways are Queen Alia Airport, Abdali and Tabarbour station. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Amman, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Amman that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Amman for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.