The main colonnaded street runs east–west through the heart of ancient Gadara, flanked by the stumps and occasional standing columns that once formed covered walkways leading past temples, shops, and public buildings. The street leads to the remains of the forum — an open paved area where civic life centred — and further east to the North Mausoleum, which contains a white marble sarcophagus, somewhat incongruous among all the black basalt.
The Ottoman village that stood here until the 1980s used many of these Roman stones in its own construction, and you can see Roman-carved door frames and lintels incorporated into the basalt village houses. Archaeologists are still excavating portions of the site, and new finds emerge regularly. The Beit Russan guesthouse and restaurant at the western end of this area occupies the former mukhtar's house and is a good place to rest and take in the site.