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Discover Jordan

Jordan is a small country with an outsized share of the ancient world: the Nabataean rock-cut city of Petra, the Roman colonnades of Jerash, Crusader castles above the King's Highway, and Umayyad desert palaces east of the capital. The landscape changes fast — olive-terraced northern highlands, the rift valley and Dead Sea below sea level, sandstone desert in the south, and a short coral coastline on the Red Sea.

Amman is the modern centre: a hill city of pale limestone with a Roman theatre downtown, the Temple of Hercules on the Citadel above it, and a busy café scene. Jerash, north of the capital, keeps its Roman street plan almost intact. Petra needs days rather than hours. Wadi Rum trades ruins for silence, camel tracks and Bedouin camps under sandstone cliffs, while Aqaba is the dive-and-beach end of the country.

Top places in Jordan

• Petra — A Nabataean city carved into rose sandstone — the Siq, the Treasury and the stair climb to the Monastery. A UNESCO World Heritage Site.
• Wadi Rum — Protected desert of sandstone towers, wind-cut corridors and Bedouin camps, listed by UNESCO for both its landscape and its rock inscriptions.
• Amman — The capital on its hills: the Citadel with the Temple of Hercules and an Umayyad palace, a Roman theatre downtown, galleries and cafés on Jabal al-Weibdeh.
• Jerash — One of the best-preserved Roman provincial cities anywhere — the oval forum, a colonnaded main street, two theatres inside the walls and Hadrian's Arch.
• Aqaba — Jordan's only seaport and its Red Sea base: coral reefs and wreck dives in the gulf, and warm water through the winter months.
• Dead Sea — The lowest dry land on Earth, hemmed by rift-valley cliffs — mineral mud, salt formations and water too dense to sink in.