Madaba — The City of Mosaics
The City of Mosaics — Ancient Artistry
Half an hour southwest of Amman, the friendly market town of Madaba hides the greatest concentration of Byzantine mosaics anywhere in the world. Under its ordinary streets lie the floors of a wealthy provincial city of the 6th and 7th centuries, when Madaba's workshops were the finest in the Christian East — and new panels are still being discovered whenever a foundation is dug.
The masterpiece is the Madaba Map, laid around 560 AD in what is now the Greek Orthodox Church of St. George. Assembled from some two million tesserae, it is the oldest surviving cartographic depiction of the Holy Land: Jerusalem appears in astonishing detail with its colonnaded Cardo and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Jordan River teems with fish, and boats sail the Dead Sea. Scholars still use it to locate lost biblical sites. Beyond St. George's, the Archaeological Park shelters the exquisite mosaics of the Church of the Virgin and Hippolytus Hall, and the Church of the Apostles preserves a famous personification of the sea.
Madaba is also simply a pleasant place to be: a historically Christian-Muslim town known for its tolerance, its artisan mosaic workshops where the craft is taught to new generations, its haddad (blacksmith) souk, and some of the best home-style Jordanian restaurants in the country. Pair it with Mount Nebo, ten minutes away, for the classic half-day.
Photo Gallery
How to Visit
Madaba is 30 minutes from Amman and pairs naturally with Mount Nebo on our private half-day Madaba & Mount Nebo Tour — church entrance, mosaic workshop visit, licensed guide and hotel pickup included. Add a Dead Sea float in the afternoon for a perfect full day.
