One of the world's oldest continuously inhabited places is right here in Amman. Civilizations have been traced back to the pottery Neolithic period. It is on top of one of the 7 jabals (hills) that make up Amman. It is the Amman Citadel. Countries including Italy, Britain, France, Spain and Jordan have been excavating the site since the 1920's, but there is still much that remains un-excavated. Today I want to see the part that has been!

Amman is a large city . It is the capital, and the place to fly into to get into Jordan. There are a few things I want to see in and around Amman before I move on to other parts of the country.

Things I will see here date back to the Bronze Age. They say there is evidence people settled here over 7,000 years ago, making it one of the oldest inhabited places on earth! Many empires rose and fell over that time period. Amman was called Philadelphia during the Roman era.

I climb the streets one day to visit the Citadel. Of course, you can take a taxi to the Citadel, but what fun is that? It's a challenging walk up the steep streets, but interesting to pass through the ancient neighborhoods bustling with their fruit and vegetable markets. 

The Citadel was built between 162-166 A.D. Much of it is still not excavated. But the ruins that have been excavated are worth the climb to the top of this highest hill in Amman .

The Muslims have a call to prayer 5 times a day. If you are on the top of this mountain when one of the calls for prayer starts, it's an amazing sound to hear the mosques around the city start singing their prayers at the same time from all directions! The music bounces off the mountains and it's an awesome sound!

The walls of the Citadel actually only surround a small portion of where the civilizations lived and worked. Artifacts from the Bronze Age have been uncovered showing the hill itself was a fortress for the commerce and politics over thousands of years. But, there are buildings, tombs, arches and stairs still being discovered that spread far out from the fortress.

There are 3 main sites of ruins to see inside the Citadel:
   (1)The Temple of Hercules
   (2) The Umayyed Palace
   (3) A Byzantine church. 
Each one of them from a different civilization in an ancient time period . The Roman Theater is just down the hill, below the Citadel.

The temple is believed to have been dedicated to the half-god, Hercules, known for his feats of strength and far-ranging adventures in Greek history and mythology. The temple was probably destroyed in one of the catastrophic earthquakes to hit the area.The next historic remains is of the huge Umayyad Palace complex. It was built over the Roman ruins from the Roman civilization before. When they built it in the early 700's, they used much of the existing Roman remains, like the 'colonnaded street' and the foundations of a Roman temple.

Below the mountain is another 'must see' when in Amman. It's the Roman Theater. It was built during the reign of Antonius Pius between 138-161 B.C.

I can see it below as I stand on Citadel HIll. But, I cannot find a way down from the top of the mountain to it. I guess I would need to go back through town and go in another direction . It's a shame because I can see it from here. It would be so much simpler to just go down the mountainside to it. When the people lived here there were stone steps leading from the Citadel down to the forum at the bottom of the mountain. But, they are not available to use now.

Since I can get a good view of the theater from the Citadel Hill, I take some photos of it and decide that is as close as I will get.

The Jordan sun is very hot by now and the roads are very steep. I will head back into town and get something cold to drink instead. The Citadel ruins are enormous and I have spent a lot of time walking around and looking at them.

It's mind boggling to think of the thousands of years of history I have seen today. I wonder about all the people that lived in these now destroyed places through the centuries. What their lives were like. Their work. Their food. Their homes. Their beliefs. How each great civilization fell and the following one built their lives right on top of their ruins!

NEXT: The Pompeii of the East!