Umm Qais is one of those places where history and landscape come together in a way that leaves you speechless. On top of its hill, among columns of black basalt and white limestone, you stand on a natural balcony from which you can see, all at once, the Sea of Galilee shimmering below, the Golan heights to the north, the deep Yarmouk River valley and, beyond, the lands of three neighbouring countries. Few viewpoints in the world pack so much geography, so much biblical history and so much beauty into a single view.
This was Gadara, one of the ten cities of the Greco-Roman Decapolis, famous in antiquity as a centre of culture: it was the birthplace of philosophers, poets and satirists, so much so that it was called 'the Athens of the East'. The Gospels place the miracle of the Gadarene (or Gerasene) swine near here, and centuries of Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs and Ottomans left their mark on the ruins: basalt theatres, a colonnaded street, a basilica, baths and even an abandoned Ottoman village crowning the site.
This guide takes you through the best of Umm Qais: what to see among its ruins, how to get there from Amman, why sunset is a must, how much admission costs and how to combine the visit with Jerash, Ajloun or the area's rural tourism initiatives, some of the most interesting in the country. Less visited than Petra or Jerash, Umm Qais rewards the traveller who makes it up here with a unique mix of evocative ruins, fresh northern air and one of the most moving panoramas in the whole Middle East.
Umm Qais stands on the site of ancient Gadara, founded as a Hellenistic city after the conquests of Alexander the Great and grown into an important cultural centre of the Greek world in the East. Under Roman rule, from 63 BC, it became part of the Decapolis and enjoyed its heyday: it was famous for its thermal baths, its theatre and above all its intellectuals, among them the poet and philosopher Meleager of Gadara and the satirist Menippus. The Gospels set the episode of the demoniacs and the swine nearby. In Byzantine times it was a bishop's seat and filled up with churches; after the Muslim conquest —preceded by the decisive Battle of Yarmouk, fought very close by in 636— it gradually lost importance. Centuries later an Ottoman village was built over the ancient ruins; it is now also abandoned and crowns the site. Rediscovered and excavated since the 19th century, Gadara is today one of the great archaeological sites of northern Jordan. Its full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The heart of the country: the capital built on seven hills, and the fertile north of the great Roman Decapolis cities, Jerash and Umm Qais.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
On top of the hill where Umm Qais stands today, with the Sea of Galilee shining at its feet, one of the most cultured cities of the whole Hellenistic East flourished in Antiquity: Gadara. Founded as a Greek settlement after the conquests of Alexander the Great, in the 4th or 3rd century BC, Gadara grew under the Hellenistic kingdoms that divided up his empire (first the Ptolemies of Egypt, then the Seleucids of Syria) and became a centre of Greek culture in a land at a crossroads.
Its fame did not come from its monuments but from its intellectuals. Gadara produced a remarkable line of philosophers, poets and satirists, which earned it the nickname 'the Athens of the East' or 'the new Athens'. Menippus came from here. He was the Cynic philosopher who created a satirical genre, Menippean satire, that would influence literature for centuries. Meleager was born here too. He was one of the great poets of the Greek language, the author of delicate love epigrams and the compiler of a famous poetic anthology. The Epicurean Philodemus and other thinkers were also from Gadara. That a city on this eastern frontier gave so many names to Greek culture says a lot about its wealth and its cosmopolitan atmosphere.
Like its neighbours, Gadara benefited from its position on the trade routes linking Arabia, Syria and the Mediterranean, and from the fertility of its land. It was also famous for its hot springs at nearby Hammat Gader, in the Yarmuk valley, where visitors from all over the region came to take the waters. When Rome arrived in this land, Gadara was already a prosperous and prestigious city, ready for a new chapter of splendour.
In 63 BC the Roman general Pompey conquered Syria and the surrounding region, and Gadara became part of the Roman world. It was one of the cities of the Decapolis, the league of Greek-culture cities (along with Gerasa, Philadelphia, Scythopolis and others) that enjoyed a special status. According to the sources, Pompey himself supported the rebuilding of the city, which then entered a new era of prosperity under Roman rule.
Over the following centuries Gadara filled up with monuments: theatres (it had several, built in the region's typical black basalt), a great colonnaded street called the Decumanus, baths fed by aqueducts, a hippodrome, a nymphaeum and temples. The city controlled a wide territory that reached as far as the Sea of Galilee and the hot springs of the Yarmuk. You can see its prosperity in the coins it minted and in the quality of its buildings. Their remains, with dark basalt set against pale marble, still impress visitors today.
Gadara also appears in the Gospels. In the story of the possessed man (or men), Jesus drives out the demons, which then enter a herd of pigs that rushes down into the lake. The Gospels place this episode in 'the country of the Gadarenes' (or Gerasenes, depending on the version), meaning the lands of Gadara beside the Sea of Galilee. The story fixed the city's name in Christian tradition for good, and it adds to the huge symbolic weight of a place at the very heart of biblical geography.
As the Empire became Christian, so did Gadara, and it became the seat of a bishopric. Churches and basilicas were built, such as the basalt-columned one you can still see today, and the city stayed important through the Byzantine period, from the 4th to the 7th century. Life went on as usual on the hill, with its baths, its converted temples and its people, in a region that was a place of passage and of contact between cultures.
That world changed for good in 636. Very close to Gadara, in the valley of the Yarmuk River that opens out below the city, the Battle of the Yarmuk was fought. It was one of the most decisive clashes in history. There the Muslim armies crushed the forces of the Byzantine Empire, sealing the Islamic conquest of all of Syria and Palestine and opening a new era in the history of the Middle East. Gadara, which had watched the battle from close by, came under Islamic rule.
Under the new rulers the city stayed inhabited for a while, but it slowly lost importance, like so many other cities of the Decapolis. Shifting trade routes, the earthquakes that regularly shook the Jordan Valley (such as the devastating one of 749) and political change gradually turned Gadara into a smaller and smaller place. In time the great city of philosophers fell into ruin and its name was almost forgotten, until a new village rose on its remains many centuries later.
For centuries the ruins of Gadara lay half-forgotten on the hilltop, at the northern tip of what would become Jordan. But with its fertile land and commanding position, the site never emptied out completely. In the 18th and 19th centuries, under the Ottoman Empire, a farming village grew up on top of the ancient ruins. Its people reused the stones and structures of the old city to build their houses, alleys and courtyards. This Ottoman village, with its mosque and stone houses (some of them notable, such as Beit Rusan), crowned the site and added a new layer of history.
Western scholars began to rediscover Gadara in the early 19th century, when European travellers and explorers identified the ruins and linked them to the Gadara of classical and biblical texts. Through the 19th and 20th centuries, German archaeologists and others carried out excavations that uncovered the west theatre, the Decumanus, the basilica, the baths and other monuments. Their work gave the ancient city back its place in history.
In the 20th century, under the Kingdom of Jordan, the authorities decided to protect the site. To do so, they moved the people of the Ottoman village to modern Umm Qais, a new town built nearby. The old village was left empty but was kept as part of the heritage site, and the site museum was set up in the Beit Rusan house. Today this ruined Ottoman village, with nature taking back its houses and its terrace looking out over the Sea of Galilee, is one of the most evocative corners of the site.
Today Umm Qais is one of the great treasures of northern Jordan, and a stop more and more valued by travellers looking for something beyond the big sites of the south. Its Greco-Roman ruins include the black basalt theatre, the colonnaded street, the Byzantine basilica and the baths. They come together with the wistful charm of the abandoned Ottoman village and, above all, with one of the most moving views in the whole Middle East: a balcony over the Sea of Galilee, the Golan Heights and the Yarmuk valley, with the borders of several countries in sight.
In recent decades Umm Qais has also become a model for community-based, responsible tourism in Jordan. Local initiatives run by residents and cooperatives offer walks and bike rides through the surrounding fields and villages, traditional cooking workshops, visits to beekeepers and local producers, and other experiences. These are a way to get to know life in the rural north, and they bring money straight into the community. It's a slower, more authentic way to travel, very different from the pace of the big tour circuits.
This landscape, so full of history, also still carries symbolic and sometimes political weight. From the viewpoint you look out over one of the most disputed regions on the planet, the scene of conflicts that continue to this day. But for the traveller who climbs up here, what Umm Qais offers above all is calm. You can sit among two-thousand-year-old columns in the cool northern air and watch the sun go down over Lake Tiberias. Few places capture so well the blend of ancient history, biblical landscape and modern life that makes Jordan such a special country.
