Explore Jordan

Petra

The rose-red city of the Nabataeans is Jordan's most extraordinary sight — a vast archaeological city carved from sandstone cliffs over two millennia ago, accessible through the kilometre-long Siq gorge that suddenly opens onto the iconic Treasury facade. Beyond the Treasury, the ruins sprawl for kilometres: a colonnaded street, Royal Tombs, a Roman theatre, and the vast Monastery at the top of an 800-step climb that rewards with a view across the desert mountains to the horizon.

Amman

Jordan's capital spreads across a series of limestone hills — the old Jabal Amman and Jabal Al-Weibdeh neighbourhoods of galleries, cafés, and art spaces contrasting with the Roman Theatre and Citadel that anchor the city's ancient core. As one of the Middle East's most cosmopolitan and liveable capitals, Amman has developed a genuine dining and cultural scene that makes it a destination in its own right rather than just a base for Petra and Wadi Rum.

Wadi Rum

The Protected Area of Wadi Rum is a UNESCO Mixed Heritage site of otherworldly red-sand deserts, towering sandstone monoliths, and petroglyphs spanning 12,000 years — and the landscape made famous as the filming location for The Martian, Lawrence of Arabia, and Rogue One. Jeep tours, camel treks, and overnight stays in Bedouin camps under a canopy of stars have made this Jordan's most atmospheric and addictive wilderness experience.

Aqaba

Jordan's only Red Sea port sits at the tip of the Gulf of Aqaba, flanked by Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Egypt across its narrow waters, and backed by the dramatic sandstone mountains of the Jordanian desert. The reef diving here ranks among the Red Sea's finest — the Marine Peace Park protects an extraordinary array of coral and marine life — and the city's palm-fringed seafront makes it a popular winter beach escape for Amman residents.

Jerash

Ancient Gerasa was one of the Roman Empire's great provincial cities, and its remains — colonnaded streets, soaring Hadrian's Arch, an oval Forum, temples to Artemis and Zeus, and two well-preserved theatres — make Jerash one of the best-preserved Greco-Roman cities outside Italy. Still largely unexcavated despite its size, and bypassed by most Middle East tour itineraries in a way that makes it mercifully uncrowded relative to its magnificence.

The Dead Sea

At 430 metres below sea level — the lowest point on Earth — the Dead Sea's hyper-saline waters support no life but provide one of travel's most surreal experiences: the involuntary buoyancy that makes swimming impossible and floating inevitable. The mineral-rich black mud on the shoreline is the centrepiece of the luxury spa industry that lines the Jordanian shore, and the views across the water to the West Bank are hauntingly beautiful at dusk.

Madaba

The City of Mosaics is home to the oldest surviving cartographic depiction of the Holy Land — a 6th-century Byzantine mosaic map of the Middle East covering the floor of St. George's Church — as well as dozens of other extraordinary mosaic pavements discovered beneath the modern city. Madaba is also the base for visiting Mount Nebo, where Moses is said to have looked across the Jordan River to the Promised Land he would never enter.

Kerak

The great Crusader castle of Kerak — built by Pagan, lord of Transjordan, in the 1140s — commands a dramatic ridge overlooking the Dead Sea valley and is one of the largest and best-preserved Crusader fortresses in the Levant. The castle's complex history of Crusader construction, Saladin's sieges, Ayyubid modification, and eventual Mamluk expansion is written in its layered stone walls, underground passageways, and spectacular Great Hall.

Ajloun

Qala'at Ar-Rabad — the Ajloun Castle — rises from a forested hilltop overlooking the Jordan Valley, built in 1184 by a nephew of Saladin to guard the crossing points of the Jordan River against Crusader attack. The surrounding Ajloun Forest Reserve is one of the few places in Jordan where oak, pistachio, and strawberry trees grow in dense woodland, offering some of the country's best hiking trails and views across to the hills of the West Bank.

Bethany Beyond the Jordan

Al-Maghtas — the UNESCO-inscribed site identified as the location of Jesus's baptism by John the Baptist — sits on the eastern bank of the Jordan River, where Byzantine and Roman churches mark the site of one of the most important events in Christian theology. The pilgrimage complex includes the actual baptism pool fed by Wadi al-Kharrar, Byzantine churches, caves where John the Baptist is said to have lived, and Elijah's Hill where the prophet is believed to have ascended to heaven.

Wadi Mujib

The Wadi Mujib Biosphere Reserve — carved by the Mujib River into a canyon that plunges 900 metres from the highland plateau to the Dead Sea shore — offers some of the most exhilarating adventure hiking in the Middle East. The Siq Trail requires wading through chest-deep water between towering canyon walls; the Ibex Trail above the gorge passes through desert mountain terrain where Nubian ibex pick their way along the ledges.

Umm Qais

Ancient Gadara sits on a basalt plateau in the far north of Jordan, its black-stone colonnaded streets and Roman theatre looking out over the Sea of Galilee, the Golan Heights, and the Jordan River valley in a panorama that takes in four countries on a clear day. Less visited than Jerash but arguably more dramatic in its setting, Umm Qais was one of the ancient Decapolis cities and is mentioned in the Gospel of Mark as the location of Jesus's healing of two demoniacs.

Dana Village

The village of Dana clings to the edge of the Wadi Dana escarpment in a location so dramatic — perched on the rim of Jordan's largest nature reserve with the canyon dropping away below — that simply arriving is an event. Dana Biosphere Reserve protects four distinct ecosystems ranging from 1,500-metre sandstone peaks to the arid depths of Wadi Araba, and is one of the best places in Jordan to spot Nubian ibex, sand cats, wolves, and over 200 bird species.

As-Salt

The UNESCO World Heritage city of As-Salt was once the most important commercial and administrative centre in Transjordan, its lanes of beautifully preserved Ottoman-era stone mansions built in distinctive yellow limestone with arched windows and ornamental ironwork. The city's multicultural history of Ottoman administrators, Christian merchants, and Muslim notables living in close quarters is reflected in churches and mosques standing side by side in the old centre.

Shobak Castle

The castle of Montreal — Shobak — was the first Crusader fortress built in Transjordan, established by Baldwin I of Jerusalem in 1115 on a conical hill rising from the desert plateau south of the Dead Sea. Less visited than Kerak and all the more rewarding for it, Shobak's skeletal towers and a secret tunnel carved through the rock to a spring 375 steps below the castle floor give a more evocative sense of Crusader life than any other site in the country.

The Nabataean capital carved from rose-red sandstone cliffs in the desert mountains of southern Jordan is one of the world's most extraordinary archaeological sites — a complete ancient city of temples, tombs, colonnaded streets, and water channels hewn from living rock by a civilisation that controlled the incense trade routes between Arabia and the Mediterranean. Inscribed in 1985, Petra was already considered a wonder before UNESCO formalised its status, and was named one of the New Seven Wonders of the World by popular vote in 2007.

This small 8th-century Umayyad bath-house and hunting lodge in the eastern Jordanian desert is one of the finest examples of early Islamic art in the world, its interior walls and ceilings covered in extraordinary frescoes depicting nude figures, hunting scenes, a calendar of the seasons, and a map of the night sky — a startlingly secular programme for a structure built within decades of the Prophet's death. The frescoes draw on Byzantine and Persian artistic traditions and include a rare zodiac ceiling that is one of the oldest surviving star maps in Islamic art.

The partially excavated Roman military camp turned Byzantine and early Islamic town of Um er-Rasas contains the largest and most complex mosaic floor in Jordan — the 8th-century St Stephen's Church mosaic measuring 15 by 5 metres, depicting cities of the Nile Delta, the Jordan Valley, and the Dead Sea in extraordinary geographical detail. The site also contains a stylite tower — a tall column on which a Christian ascetic would have lived in isolation — and churches whose floors preserve some of the most refined Byzantine geometric mosaic work in the Middle East.

The vast desert landscape of Wadi Rum — inscribed for both natural and cultural values — is a geological canvas of towering sandstone and granite mountains, red sand plains, narrow gorges, and natural rock arches that has been continuously occupied by humans for over 12,000 years. The cultural record spans Neolithic petroglyphs, Nabataean inscriptions, Islamic-era rock carvings, and the 20th-century travels of T.E. Lawrence, whose descriptions of Wadi Rum in Seven Pillars of Wisdom made it one of the most iconic landscapes in Arabic literature.

Identified with high scholarly confidence as the location of Jesus's baptism by John the Baptist, Al-Maghtas on the eastern bank of the Jordan River has been a major Christian pilgrimage destination since the Byzantine period — when churches, monasteries, and pools were built to mark the event. Inscribed in 2015, the site includes the baptism pool at Wadi al-Kharrar, Elijah's Hill, and the remains of five Byzantine churches, and receives pilgrims from every major Christian tradition who come to be baptised in its waters.

The historic centre of As-Salt, inscribed in 2021, preserves the most complete example of the late Ottoman commercial and residential urban tradition in Jordan — a grid of stone mansions in yellow limestone with distinctive arched windows and European-influenced wrought-iron balconies that reflect the city's role as the primary trading hub between Syria and the Hejaz in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The inscription also recognises As-Salt's longstanding tradition of Christian-Muslim coexistence and its regional reputation for civic hospitality.

Inscribed in 2024, Umm Al-Jimāl is a remarkably complete black-basalt ghost town in the northeastern Jordanian desert that served continuously as a Nabataean waystation, Roman fort, Byzantine town, and early Islamic settlement before being abandoned in the 8th century. Its dense urban fabric — streets, houses, churches, water cisterns, and a caravanserai — remains almost entirely above ground, making it one of the best-preserved examples of the agricultural settlements of the Hauran plateau and a rare document of the transition from Roman provincial to early Islamic rural life.