The Citadel is an admirable place and is one of the few spots in all the planet where man is constantly present since very remote times.
The Citadel is the historical and civilizational axis of Amman, the beautiful capital of present-day Jordan, for all cultures, in their ancestry, posted there first their legacy.
Occupied since Prehistory, the Citadel houses vestiges and objects that date back to the beginning of civilization (6000 to 7000 B.C.).
When entering the Citadel, the first thing you see are slabs representing this long journey of human saga. The slabs show all the different civilizations that lived there throughout the ages.
Located on the top of a circular mountain offering a 360 degree view, it gives us the impression of being in a majestic and strategic Olympus, which reigns until today as a geographical and testimonial vestige of times and ages past…
We can admire, surprised, the pharaonic grandeur of giant pillars of the monumental Temple of Hercules. Little has remained, except for two or three whole columns and a few others partially preserved, but one can clearly realize the architectural power of the Greek-Roman civilization that resided in Amman, called at the time as Philadelphia, one of the pillars of sustenance and power in the East.
Entering the simple museum, we realize all the legacy of the place. We find the oldest statues created by human beings, preserved to this day, dated to 6500 B.C.
Besides pre-historical pieces, the museum also brings collections of Rome, the Nabataean kingdom and other ancient civilizations, some not very known in the West, found in Jordan lands. Interesting are the clay sarcophagus, which points to the practice of burying the dead vertically, until then never found at another place or culture.
The Citadel still brings testimony to the passage of religions through time, showing the polychrome faith of the Romans, passing from the monotheistic Christian Byzantine civilization that pulsed from the neighbor Constantinople, evolving to the current mosques of Muslin faith.
At the Citadel, the many archeological sites reveal this indivisible line of the history that goes through the labyrinthine centuries of human adventure.
(This post is an excerpt from my book “Jordan´s Historical Treasures”, from 2014, ISBN 978-85-67911-01-4)
Photos, video and text by Marcelo Ozorio
Marcelo Ozorio at Citadel – Amman – Jordan
