Amman is the capital of Jordan and the country's gateway: almost every traveller passes through here, and most use it as a base for trips to Petra, the Dead Sea, Jerash and the desert castles. The city has grown from a small settlement of a few thousand people a century ago into a bustling metropolis of over four million, spread across a patchwork of hills (the classic seven have long since been outgrown) in the limestone uplands of the Eastern Desert. The contrasts are sharp. Traditional Bedouin culture in the cafes and souks of Downtown (Al Balad) sits beside the European-style boutiques and galleries of Jabal Amman; gleaming new suburbs like Abdoun and Sweifieh rise to the west; sprawling refugee-built quarters spread to the east. Arabic satellite television, Iraqi intellectuals and Syrian shopkeepers all find a corner here.
There is more to Amman than its function as a transit hub. The Citadel (Jabal al-Qal'a), crowning the highest hill downtown, holds the remains of the Roman Temple of Hercules, a 6th-century Byzantine church and the finely vaulted Umayyad Palace, with a sweeping view over the ancient Roman Theatre (still hosting concerts 18 centuries after it was built) and the tangled streets of the old city below. The Jordan Museum on Ras al-Ayn is one of the best museums in the Middle East, with the oldest human statues ever found (the 9,500-year-old Ain Ghazal figures) and some of the Dead Sea Scrolls. And the food is one of the city's great pleasures — mansaf, mezze, knafeh from Habibah in the downtown, shawarma from Reem on Second Circle, coffee with cardamom at any corner stall.