Hisham's Palace is an early 8th-century Umayyad complex built under Caliph Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik (or possibly his nephew al-Walid II — scholars still disagree). It sprawls across 60 hectares north of Jericho, comprising a palace, an elaborate bath complex, and an agricultural estate fed by a sophisticated water system drawing on local springs.
The palace was barely completed before the great earthquake of 749 CE largely destroyed it, which means the interior has been preserved in a kind of suspended state. The bath complex contains what may be one of the largest floor mosaics in the world — 835 square metres with more than five million individual pieces. The centrepiece is the famous Tree of Life mosaic, a stunning composition that shows a tree with gazelles on one side and a lion attacking a gazelle on the other.
Since 2021, Japanese-funded restoration has added a protective dome shelter over the mosaics with suspended walkways for viewing, which dramatically improves the visitor experience. An on-site museum displays pottery and relics from the Umayyad and Abbasid periods. The site is about 3 kilometres north of central Jericho.