Amman Citadel

Common card · No. 316069

The Amman Citadel (Arabic: القلعة, romanized: al-Qal'a, lit. 'the Fortress') on Citadel Hill (Arabic: جبل القلعة, romanized: Jabal al-Qal'a, lit. 'Fortress Mount') is an archaeological site on an L-shaped hill towering over Downtown Amman, in the central part of the capital of Jordan. The Amman Citadel is considered to be among the world's oldest continuously inhabited places. Evidence of inhabitance since the Neolithic period has been found and the hill was fortified during the Bronze Age (1800 BCE). The hill became the capital of the Kingdom of Ammon, sometime after 1200 BCE. It later came under the sway of major powers such as the Assyrian, Babylonian, Ptolemaic, Seleucid, Roman, Byzantine, and Umayyad empires. During classical antiquity the city expanded far beyond Citadel Hill, which was given the role of an acropolis. After the Umayyads came a period of decline and for much of the following millennium, the former city became an abandoned pile of ruins only sporadically used by Bedouins...

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