Abu Jaber house
A painted-ceiling mansion, now a museum.
Tarawneh — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Hassan Bushnaq — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Hassan Bushnaq — CC BY-SA 4.0 · 1995Maisjamal — CC BY 4.0 · Tarawneh — CC BY-SA 3.0
A town climbing three close-set hills in houses of golden-yellow stone, inscribed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 2021 as As-Salt: the Place of Tolerance and Urban Hospitality. As-Salt was the leading town east of the Jordan in the late Ottoman era, before Amman became the capital in 1921, and merchants from Nablus, Damascus and Beirut built spacious houses here between the 1860s and the 1920s, with arches, tall windows and iron balconies. The best known is the Abu Jaber house, a three-storey mansion with painted ceilings that is now the Historic Old Salt Museum. Around it long stone stairways run down between the houses to the Al-Ain plaza, and Hammam Street, the narrow old market, is lined with vegetable, spice and sweet shops. One of the town's charms is the way mosques and churches stand side by side in the same lanes: the Grand Mosque and the Small Mosque, and the Church of Al-Khader, which Muslims and Christians visit alike, the very thing UNESCO meant to honour in the name. As-Salt is about half an hour by car from Amman and half a day on foot is enough, with lunch in one of its local restaurants.
A painted-ceiling mansion, now a museum.
The narrow old market.
Between the golden houses.
Central As-Salt, Balqa Governorate, about 30 km north-west of Amman
For its late Ottoman houses of yellow stone and for the way its Muslims and Christians share the same lanes and traditions of hospitality; it was inscribed in 2021.
About half an hour by car; buses leave from the Mahatta and Sweileh stations, and the old town is best walked.