Jerash, the Roman city of Gerasa, lies in the hills of northern Jordan about 48 km north of Amman, and it is one of the best-preserved Greco-Roman cities anywhere outside Italy. Its ruins hold a triumphal arch built for Emperor Hadrian's visit in AD 129–130, a hippodrome, an oval plaza, a colonnaded main street, two theatres, the temples of Zeus and Artemis, a monumental fountain and at least 14 churches. Gerasa was one of the Decapolis cities of the Roman east, flourished again under the Umayyads, and was largely wrecked by the earthquake of 749. With about 330,000 visitors in 2018 it is Jordan's most visited ancient site after Petra, and the ruins host the Jerash Festival each summer.
The ancient city sits on the west bank of the stream the Greeks called the Chrysorrhoas, the "Golden River"; the modern town, home to 50,745 people at the 2015 census and capital of Jerash Governorate, spreads over the east bank. The best way to understand Gerasa is to walk it from south to north, the way a traveller from Philadelphia, modern Amman, would have arrived.
Hadrian's Arch, AD 129–130
The walk starts well outside the old walls. Hadrian spent the winter of 129–130 in Gerasa during his tour of the eastern provinces, and the citizens built a triple-arched gateway to mark the visit. Each face has four engaged columns on pedestals, and the bases are wrapped in a ring of carved acanthus leaves, an unusual touch that may reflect Nabataean builders. The arch also had a marble inscription panel 7.14 metres wide, with letters 12 to 13 cm tall.
The arch's distance from the city wall is itself evidence. It was meant to stand at the edge of a new southern quarter, and Gerasa planned to grow out to meet it. That expansion never happened, so the gateway was left standing alone in the fields. It was under restoration in 2005, and the work was completed in 2007, leaving the arch roughly 21 metres high.
The Hippodrome Outside the South Gate
Between the arch and the city walls lies the hippodrome, a long racetrack for chariots. Its track measures about 245 metres, at the small end of the known Roman circuses, and its stands held around 15,000 spectators. That sounds modest beside Rome's Circus Maximus, but for a provincial city it was a heavy investment.
The track is busy again today. The Roman Army and Chariot Experience stages shows here, with 45 legionaries in armour drilling in formation, ten gladiators, and chariots running a seven-lap race around the old course.
The Oval Plaza and the Temple of Zeus
Through the South Gate the ground rises, and the city opens into its most distinctive public space. The Oval Plaza is an irregular ellipse about 300 feet (90 metres) long, ringed by a curving colonnade of Ionic columns, and paved in stone. On the mound known as Camp Hill, just east of the cardo and overlooking the plaza, the Jerash Archaeological Museum displays finds from prehistoric to Islamic times, including fragmentary Roman statues of the Muses discovered in 2016 and a lead sarcophagus of the late 4th or 5th century decorated with both Christian and pagan symbols.
Zeus Olympios was the god the Greek settlers brought with them, and his sanctuary stands on the rise beside the plaza. Who those settlers were is disputed. Greek inscriptions found in the city claim a founding by Alexander the Great and his general Perdiccas, who supposedly settled veteran Macedonians here in 331 BC. The city's old official name, Antioch on the Chrysorrhoas, points instead to the Seleucid king Antiochus IV, and other sources credit Ptolemy II of Egypt. What is certain is that the Hasmonean king Alexander Jannaeus took the city in the early 80s BC, and that Pompey detached it in 63 BC and attached it to the Decapolis, a group of Hellenistic cities under Roman protection.
The South Theatre's Speaking Stone
Beside the Temple of Zeus, the South Theatre is set into the same hillside; a second, the North Theatre, stands further up the city. The South Theatre is best known for its acoustics. A distinctive stone marks a spot in the centre of the orchestra, and a person speaking at a normal volume from it can be heard clearly across the auditorium. Most of Gerasa's monuments were built with donations from its wealthy citizens.
Up the Colonnaded Cardo
From the Oval Plaza the cardo, the main colonnaded street, runs north through the whole city. Two cross streets, the southern and northern decumani, cut across it, and each crossing was marked by a tetrapylon, a four-sided monumental gateway. Along the way stand a macellum, or porticoed market, two great bath complexes and, by the end of antiquity, a run of churches. Gerasa was annexed to the new Roman province of Arabia in AD 106, alongside Philadelphia, Petra and Bostra, and the roads Trajan built through the province brought more trade to the city. The baths still yield finds: in 2018 excavators of the Eastern Baths recovered at least 14 marble sculptures, including figures of Aphrodite and Zeus, and the Visitor Centre displays restored statues of Zeus and Aphrodite found in 2016, alongside a marble head thought to portray the empress Julia Domna.
The city's residents included the mathematician Nicomachus of Gerasa, born around AD 60. According to the historian Josephus, Gerasa was mostly Syrian with a small Jewish community, and during the First Jewish–Roman War it was one of the few non-Jewish cities in the region that neither killed nor imprisoned its Jewish residents, escorting those who wished to leave to the border. Under Byzantine rule the walls enclosed about 80 hectares, and the city built at least 14 churches between the 4th and 7th centuries, many with fine mosaic floors. The cathedral, raised in the 4th century just off the cardo, reused the columns of a Roman temple of Dionysus on the same spot.
The Nymphaeum of AD 191
About halfway up the cardo, a towering curved façade marks the Nymphaeum, the city's monumental public fountain, completed in AD 191. It was fed by an aqueduct. The lower storey was faced with marble and the upper storey with painted plaster, and the whole front was capped by a half-dome, forming one giant niche. Water spilled through seven carved lion heads into small basins at the edge of the pavement.
The Temple of Artemis and Its Unfinished Cella
Just beyond the Nymphaeum, a broad propylaeum, or ceremonial gateway, opens off the cardo and leads up a series of terraces to the Temple of Artemis. Artemis was the patron goddess of Gerasa, probably a Greek name for a local deity worshipped long before the colonists came. Work on a larger sanctuary began after the Bar Kokhba revolt ended in AD 136, and the propylaeum was finished in AD 150, under Antoninus Pius. The temple itself was never completed.
Eleven of its columns still stand at the front, each 13.20 metres high, their Corinthian capitals carrying the signature of Hygeinos, the contractor who carved them. Inside, the cella was lined with coloured marble, and an arched niche at the back held the cult statue. When the emperors banned pagan cults at the end of the 4th century, the marble was stripped and the cella became a public hall with a mosaic floor. In the 6th century, after the roof fell in, it was turned into a fortified house in the middle of a workshop district.
The 749 Earthquake and the Jerash Festival
Gerasa did not end with Rome. The Sasanian Persians took it in 614, and after the Byzantine defeat at the Yarmuk in 636 it passed to the Rashidun Caliphate. Under the Umayyads it prospered once more: it had a large mosque and many shops, churches stayed in use beside it, and the city minted coins marked "Jerash" in Arabic and made clay lamps stamped with the potter's name and the city's.
That ended on 18 January 749, when an earthquake centred in Galilee wrecked cities on both sides of the Jordan, Jerash among them. The Temple of Artemis survived it, but much of the city did not. In 1120 the atabeg of Damascus, Toghtekin, had a 40-man garrison fortify part of the ruins; Baldwin II, the Crusader king of Jerusalem, took and destroyed the fort in 1121. An Ottoman tax census of 1596 counted just 12 Muslim households. Circassian settlers arrived in 1885, and the ancient city has been uncovered in a series of excavations since 1925. Discoveries continue: in 2025 archaeologists published a mass grave of around 230 people killed by the 6th-century Plague of Justinian, the first confirmed one in the eastern Mediterranean.
Since 1981 the ruins have also been a stage. The Jerash Festival of Culture and Arts, founded by Queen Noor, fills the ancient city with music, poetry, dance and theatre for about three weeks each summer. It was folded into a national Jordan Festival in 2008, then revived under its own name; the 31st edition in 2016 drew more than 100,000 visitors.
Jerash pairs naturally with the rock-cut Nabataean capital to the south, covered in our guide to Petra, and with a stay in Amman, whose own Roman theatre once served the Decapolis city of Philadelphia. To see how Gerasa fitted into the empire as a whole, follow the frontiers in our look at the geography of the Roman Empire.