Madaba, and the oldest map of the Holy Land, laid in a church floor

Madaba is a busy market town on the plateau south-west of Amman, a short drive from the capital and the airport. It is one of the oldest Christian communities in Jordan, and its streets of shops, churches and mosques have a relaxed, friendly air. Under its streets and in its churches lies one of the great collections of ancient mosaics in the Middle East, most of them from the Byzantine and early Islamic periods, between the fifth and eighth centuries. That has earned it the name City of Mosaics.

The map

In the 1880s, Christian families from Kerak, further south, resettled the then-abandoned site of Madaba. When they began building a new church on the ruins of an older one, they uncovered a great mosaic in the floor. Over the following years it was recognised for what it was: a map of the Holy Land, made in the sixth century, when Madaba was a prosperous Byzantine town and an important stop for pilgrims.

The map originally covered a large part of the church floor and showed the whole region from Lebanon in the north to the Nile Delta in the south. It was made of a vast number of small stone and glass cubes. Much of it has been lost, but the surviving portion, in the floor of the Greek Orthodox Church of St George, is still large and remarkably detailed. It is the oldest surviving map of the Holy Land in its original form, and an invaluable record of the region in late antiquity.

Its centrepiece is Jerusalem, shown in a bird's-eye view with its walls and gates, its main colonnaded street, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at its heart. Some of the streets and buildings it shows have since been found by archaeologists exactly where the map places them. Elsewhere, the River Jordan winds down to the Dead Sea, with fish swimming in it. Some of them appear to be turning back upstream, away from the salt water. Boats sail on the Dead Sea itself, and lions chase gazelles across the desert. Towns are labelled in Greek, and many of them can still be identified.

Madaba's other mosaics

The map is the most famous of Madaba's mosaics, but not the most beautiful. In the Archaeological Park, in the centre of town, the floors of several Byzantine buildings and churches have been uncovered and protected. They are covered with scenes of animals, plants, hunting and mythology, including figures from Greek myth, a reminder of how classical culture lingered in the Byzantine world. The Church of the Apostles has a fine personification of the sea, a woman rising from the waves surrounded by fish and sea creatures. A school in the town trains craftsmen to restore mosaics and make new ones, and the shops sell their work.

Madaba also has a long tradition of carpet and rug weaving, and its shops sell kilims and woven bags alongside mosaic reproductions and ceramics. The town's restaurants, several of them in old stone houses, are a pleasant place to eat. In the evenings, its streets are busy with families shopping and strolling, a sociable small-town scene a world away from the busy capital.

Mount Nebo, and the tours

A few kilometres west of Madaba, Mount Nebo is the hill from which, according to the Bible, Moses looked out over the Promised Land before he died. The view on a clear day stretches across the Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea to Jericho and, sometimes, Jerusalem. The Franciscans who care for the site have built a modern church over the remains of a Byzantine basilica, and its mosaic floors, with scenes of hunting, herding and wine-making, are among the finest in Jordan.

Travelsphere's Jordan's Ancient Wonders, seven nights, includes Madaba and Mount Nebo with Amman, Jerash, Shobak, Petra, Siq al-Barid, Wadi Rum and the Dead Sea.

Explore Worldwide's Upgraded Treasures of Jordan, eight nights, includes both, along with Ajloun, Jerash, Kerak, Petra, Wadi Rum, Aqaba and the Dead Sea. Explore Worldwide's Jordan Discovery, eight nights, includes them too.

Madaba is close enough to the airport that some visitors spend their first or last night there. It is a good choice: quieter than Amman, and full of things to see on foot.