Two of the best regional archaeology museums in Jordan are on a single university campus 70 km north of Amman — the Museum of Jordanian Heritage and the Jordan Natural History Museum, plus the still-occupied Tell Irbid downtown.
On the eastern foothills of the Jordan Valley, a tell with continuous occupation from 6,000 BCE to the Mamluk period — Bronze Age temple, Roman theatre, Byzantine basilica, Mamluk mosque, all on one site.
Three kilometres north of the Petra gate is one of the earliest villages with permanent stone architecture in the Levant — older than the pyramids by four thousand years.
Forty-eight kilometres north of Amman, the Decapolis city of Gerasa survives in better shape than almost any Roman ruin outside Italy — until the 749 earthquake.
Bronze Age fortress, Roman temple, Byzantine basilica, Umayyad palace — and the best view of downtown Amman. The Citadel is a lazy 90-minute walk that reads like a time-lapse.
An opinionated, partner-co-signed walking plan for Jordan's UNESCO-listed Nabataean capital — what to see, when to start, and what to skip.