Arrived in Amman yesterday.
So far, it is one of my favorite places I have ever been.
Upon arriving at my hotel, I threw on some jeans and some eye liner and walked uphill to reach the old citadel. The path is confusing – and I went the wrong way, taking a set of stairs that led me up to the old fortified South Gate, which was now closed (requiring me to backtrack through alleys and people’s parking strips to get back to the main road).
The Citadel was a surprise highlight of my trip, especially considering before last week I didn’t even know it existed.
I confess, I’m a sucker for any large archeological site – all the more so if I’m allowed to go up and touch the stones and the walls, scrambling up and around and standing on the crumbling remains of civilizations past.
There is something reassuring about it. Seeing the cycle of growth and decay of mankind’s creations throughout the centuries. Recognizing that we too are part of this cycle. That everything eventually crumbles and turns to shit, and everything we’ve built and worked for will too – but that it’s okay…it’s been like this for millennia.
They have a small museum on-site. There are artifacts dating back to the Neolithic Age in 6,000 BC. There have been civilizations using this same plot of land through out time, all of whom left evidence of their former existence…the Greeks (who called it Philadelphia), the Romans, the Byzantines, the Umayyads, the Assyrians, the Abbasids, the Ottomans – some of them building upon it, some of them neglecting it and allowing it to fall apart, but all of them, there.
There are remnants of temples and churches and mosques and palaces, all on this little hillside, surrounded by a fortified wall, which is now held up by chicken wire.
