Amman Audio Tours

Amman has been inhabited since roughly 8000 BC, placing it in a very short list of cities where modern life layers continuously over ancient life without fully burying it. The Ain Ghazal statues found here -- now in the Jordan Museum -- date to 6000 BC and are the oldest large-scale human figures ever discovered. The Ammonites called it Rabat Amman; Alexander's successor Ptolemy II renamed it Philadelphia; the Romans built a theatre here around 100 AD that still seats concert audiences today; Circassian refugees resettled it in 1878; and the Hashemite kingdom made it a capital in the 20th century. The history compresses in ways that require patience to appreciate.

The city is built on hills -- jabals -- and the distinction between East and West Amman reflects economic geography as much as topography.

Rainbow Street in Jabal al-Webdeh, above the Roman amphitheatre, is where you eat: hummus at Hashem Restaurant (patronized by kings, recommended by Anthony Bourdain, still unchanged), mansaf (lamb slow-cooked in jameed yogurt sauce over rice, Jordan's national dish), and knafeh -- the cheese-and-semolina pastry soaked in syrup -- from any corner bakery. The Friday morning gold souk near the Roman theatre is a scene of remarkable everyday ordinariness: families buying jewelry under ancient stones, commerce proceeding as it has in this city for a very long time.