Ajloun Castle: the Ayyubid fortress Saladin built to keep the Crusaders out
Built in 1184 by a commander in Saladin's army, the castle on Mount Ajloun guarded the Damascus–Egypt road and held the line against the La…
Journal
Field notes, travel stories & platform updates from the ActivGate community.
All stories
Showing 51–56 of 56 results
The Amman Roman Theatre: 6,000 seats cut into the hill across from the Citadel
Built in the 2nd century under Antoninus Pius and oriented north so the sun stays out of spectators' eyes — the largest surviving Roman the…
The Madaba Map: the oldest surviving mosaic of the Holy Land, still in the church floor
A 6th-century Byzantine mosaic of two million tesserae depicting Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and the Holy Land — discovered in 1884 under the flo…
Beidha: the 9,000-year-old village 3 km north of Petra
Three kilometres north of the Petra gate is one of the earliest villages with permanent stone architecture in the Levant — older than the p…
Mount Nebo: where Moses saw the Promised Land — and the view is still the point
Seven hundred metres above the Jordan Valley, the summit where Moses is said to have died — and on a clear day you can see the same view he…
Jerash: walking the Roman city the 749 earthquake left behind
Forty-eight kilometres north of Amman, the Decapolis city of Gerasa survives in better shape than almost any Roman ruin outside Italy — unt…