Madaba & Mount Nebo

Just 30-45 minutes south-west of Amman, the market town of Madaba wears its nickname — the City of Mosaics — with quiet pride. Beneath its churches and houses lie some of the finest Byzantine and Umayyad mosaic floors ever uncovered, the legacy of a prosperous Christian community that flourished here from the 5th century onwards.

The star attraction is the Madaba Map in the Greek Orthodox Church of St George: a 6th-century mosaic floor depicting the Holy Land from Lebanon to the Nile Delta, with a detailed plan of Jerusalem at its heart. It is the oldest surviving map of the region, and scholars still consult it. Around town, the Archaeological Park, the Church of the Apostles, and working mosaic ateliers continue a craft tradition nearly two millennia old.

Ten minutes further west, the road climbs to Mount Nebo, the windswept summit where, in the biblical account, Moses looked out over the Promised Land he would never enter. The Franciscan sanctuary at the top shelters exceptional mosaics of its own, while the terrace beside the Brazen Serpent sculpture commands a vast panorama over the Jordan Valley and the northern Dead Sea, with Jericho — and on the clearest days, the hills of Jerusalem — in the distance.

Both sites charge small entry fees of a few JOD, which are generally separate from the Jordan Pass — check jordanpass.jo for current inclusions. Madaba and Mount Nebo pair naturally with the Baptism Site at Bethany Beyond the Jordan, down in the valley below, for a full day of biblical Jordan before continuing south along the King’s Highway.