Amman Travel Guide

Introduction

The sprawling capital of Jordan undulates over seven hills, and is home to more than a million people, making it larger than any of Israel's cities. There is an older "downtown" area around the ancient, beautifully restored Roman Amphitheater, but there is no one main business center or hotel district in Amman. Offices and hotels are scattered randomly across the entire sprawling city.

In biblical times, Amman was Rabbath-Ammon, the capital of the Ammonite people; in the Hellenistic/Roman period, this was the formidable city of Philadelphia, a member of the league of cities known as the Decapolis -- impressive ruins from those times still blend into the structure of modern Amman. During the early 1920s, when Trans-Jordan was carved out of the wreckage of the Ottoman Empire, centrally located in Amman (at that time little more than a village), rather than the larger town of Salt to the north, was chosen as Emir Abdullah's administrative center. Until 1948, Amman remained essentially...