Umm Qais — Where Three Countries Meet
Greek-Roman Decapolis City — Triple Country View
In Jordan's far northwest corner, ancient Gadara crowns a ridge with the most extraordinary panorama in the country: the Sea of Galilee shimmering below, the Golan Heights rising beyond it, the Yarmouk gorge at your feet — Jordan, Israel and Syria in a single sweep of the eye. The ancients chose their real estate well.
Gadara was no provincial backwater. A proud member of the Decapolis, it was famed across the classical world as a city of philosophers and poets — Menippus the satirist, Meleager the love poet, and Philodemus, teacher of Virgil, were all Gadarenes. The Gospels place the Miracle of the Swine "in the country of the Gadarenes," drawing Christian pilgrims here since Byzantine times. What sets the ruins apart visually is their material: Gadara built in black basalt, and its dark colonnaded street, its brooding West Theatre with seats of polished black stone, and its basilica terrace make a striking contrast to the honey-colored ruins elsewhere in Jordan.
Alongside the ancient city stands a late-Ottoman village of basalt cottages, elegantly repurposed into a museum and a celebrated terrace restaurant whose tables enjoy that triple-country view — arguably the best lunch panorama in the Middle East. Far fewer visitors reach Umm Qais than Jerash, which is precisely its charm: history, poetry and one of the region's great landscapes, mostly to yourself.
Photo Gallery
How to Visit
Umm Qais is about 2 hours north of Amman and combines naturally with Jerash and Ajloun on a full northern day, or features on our Biblical Jordan itineraries. Time your visit for lunch on the terrace — the view across the Sea of Galilee is unforgettable.