Welcome to Amman!
Amman (Arabic: عمان ʻammān) is the capital and largest city of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan with a population of about 4 million as of 2020. Amman forms a great base for exploring the country and does, despite popular belief, hold a few items of interest to the traveller. The city is generally well-appointed for the traveller, reasonably well-organized, and the people are very friendly.
Although not seen as much when in the air over Amman, the city holds many surprises for the visitor. Anything can be found in Amman if one asks. Visit Amman's Roman Amphitheatre or stay in a luxurious hotel. Shopping malls are abundant in Jordan. With new construction in Abdali, in a few years, the high-end traveller could eat in the most high-end restaurant, stay in a five-star hotel or shop in massive malls, all a few metres from one another. Much less is being done to cater to the budget traveller, although urban beautification in the city centre (old town) is cleaning it up and making it more pedestrian-friendly.
Amman is experiencing a massive (some would say: reckless) change from a quiet sleepy village to a bustling metropolis, some of whose neighbourhoods seem hell-bent on wanting to imitate Dubai. Amman's roads have a reputation of being very steep and narrow in some of the underdeveloped parts of the city but now the city has state-of-the-art highways and paved avenues. The steep terrain and heavy traffic remain challenging for pedestrians and for rare cyclists. New resorts and hotels dot the city and there are many things for the traveller to see and do. Use Amman as a staging point for travels to nearby cities and settlements in Jordan.
Amman (Arabic: عَمَّان, ʻammān, Rabat ʻAmān) is the capital and largest city of Jordan, and the country's economic, political, and cultural center. With a population of 4,536,500, Amman is the largest city in the Levant region and the sixth-largest city in the Arab world. The earliest evidence of settlement in Amman comes from a Neolithic site known as 'Ain Ghazal, which reached its height around 7000 BC. During the Iron Age, the city was known as Rabbath Ammon and served as the capital of the Ammonite civilization. In the 3rd century BC, Ptolemy II Philadelphus, Pharoah of Ptolemaic Egypt, rebuilt the city and renamed it "Philadelphia", making it a regional center of Hellenistic culture. Under Roman rule, Philadelphia was one of the ten Greek cities of the Decapolis before being directly ruled as part of Arabia Petraea. The Rashidun Caliphate conquered the city from the Byzantines in the 7th century and gave it its current name of Amman. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, the city alternated between periods of devastation and abandonment and periods of relative prosperity as the center of the Balqa region. Amman was largely abandoned from the 15th century until 1878 when Ottoman authorities began settling Circassian refugees there.
Amman's first municipal council was established in 1909. Amman witnessed rapid growth after its designation as Transjordan's capital in 1921, and after several successive waves of refugees: Palestinians in 1948 and 1967, Iraqis in 1990 and 2003, and Syrians in 2011. It was initially built on seven hills but now spans over 19 hills combining 22 areas, which are administered by the Greater Amman Municipality. Areas of Amman have gained their names from either the hills (Jabal) or the valleys (Wadi) they occupy, such as Jabal Lweibdeh and Wadi Abdoun. East Amman is predominantly filled with historic sites that frequently host cultural activities, while West Amman is more modern and serves as the economic center of the city. Approximately two million visitors arrived in Amman in 2014, which made it the 93rd most-visited city in the world and the fifth most-visited Arab city. Amman has a relatively fast-growing economy, and it is ranked as a Beta− global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Moreover, it was named one of the Middle East and North Africa's best cities according to economic, labor, environmental, and socio-cultural factors. The city is among the most popular locations in the Arab world for multinational corporations to set up their regional offices, alongside Doha and only behind Dubai. It is expected that in the next 10 years these three cities will capture the largest share of multinational corporation activity in the region.