Jordan – Madaba & Mt Nebo

Madaba and Mt Nebo, Jordan

Standing atop Mount Nebo you can see down into the Jordan River Valley, across the Israeli border to Jericho, Jerusalem and the Dead Sea. Mt Nebo is where God showed Moses” the promised land”, according to the Bible. It now has a church built over where it happened. Madaba city has so many beautiful and well known churches and the famous mosaic map in St George’s Basilica. If you want to see some of the best ancient in-situ mosaics in the world then this is the city to visit. This may seem a little like a Christian religious tour but it is a coincidence. Funnily enough, there are so many important Biblical sites in Jordan and I just had to see them.

How to visit Mt Nebo and Madaba.

My visit to Mt Nemo and Madaba was part of my trip to Jordan where I also visited:

Petra, (Click here for review)

Amman, (click here for review)

Jerash and Ajloun, (click here for info) 

On this same trip to The Middle East I also visited a total of 10 other locations in Egypt and Lebanon. Find the places I went to under those countries on my destinations page

Due to the lack of comprehensive public transport in Jordan, getting to Mount Nebo or madaba can be a difficult trip, but there is an easy solution.

Train

There are no trains in Jordan so that is easily dealt with.

Bus

The public coach system can be confusing at coach stations, as there is little clear information. Often buses don’t even have numbers on them, to identify themselves. Your transport could be a bus, coach or mini-van depending on the company. It will take you to the town centre or station and then you have to work out how to get from there to the site, which could be difficult or a long way away.

Car

Car rental is possible in Jordan. It is not cheap but gives you freedom to move around the country at ease and parking (apart from city centres) is fairly easy/laid back. Driving standards can be tricky and cars can be wrecks, that you have to deal with on the streets. Roads are generally good but be prepared for rough conditions if you wander off main roads. Road signage is variable and apart from signage to major cities/airport on main roads is not reliable or even often existent.

Taxi

Often used by single tourists who can afford to splash the cash or done in a group of 4. It can work out reasonable in a group, but you have to negotiate hard, get a driver who knows where the sites are and is a safe driver. Yep it’s comfortable and quick but only use reputable ones, arranged through your hotel, tour company or reliable source. Otherwise it can be a let down or uncomfortable with a non-English speaking driver, who easily gets lost.

Tour bus.

This is my recommended method. They are relatively cheap, clean, modern and run to schedules. They drop you off at the site, you self-guide (they don’t include a guide unless you have opted for a guided tour at about 2 or 3 times the self-guide prices), You have plenty of time at the site, they pick you up and move on to the next site. You can often cover 2 or 3 sites in fairly close proximity to each other this way.

JETT tours

I used a tour bus company called JETT or JTT on some sites. It is the nearest thing they have to a national bus service and is mainly geared to tourists but I saw many Jordanians using them too. Click here for site info . Great value, comfortable, and you often get to chat with other fellow travellers on the day, as I did, which breaks up the monotony of travel a bit.

Go to their website and see the many varied trips you can do in a day or longer. Book in advance online as they do get full and I saw many passengers unable to catch crucial buses for them as they were full, just because they felt they could just turn up and go.

Jordan Pass

If it works for you, also buy the Jordan Pass in advance of arrival in Jordan.

This pass, costing 70 JD, gets you free entrance to 40 sites around Jordan (most sites charge 3-7 JD entrance), including Petra (50 JD entrance) and also gets you a free visitor’s entry Visa to Jordan (40 JD). It easily saved me over 50 JD on my 6 days in Jordan.

Read more in my Amman, Jordan post here about how the Jordan Pass saved me loads on my visits to sites around Jordan

Start of the tour 

My trip was from Amman on JTT tours programme, to visit the Baptism site of Jesus, Mount Nebo and the town of Madaba.

The baptism site is obvious (although there is another contested site in Israel).

Mt Nebo is from where Moses was shown the promised land from the top of a mountain and now has a big modern church built over its ancient mosaic floors and foundations,

The city of Madaba has several important Christian Churches with a big Christian population. Along with a well-kept town centre area, it has a big Mosque, a visitor’s centre and views over the city from several of the church towers.

Pick up for the tour

On the day, we woke to an overnight huge rain storm and the ground was still wet and huge pools of water had formed, even in the city.

It was not a good sight, first thing in the morning, when you are about to go out on a bus trip to open-air locations.

I boarded the coach at our pick up point next to the Intercontinental Hotel. Immediately, I got chatting to several other travellers from USA, Slovakia and France who had boarded and got on at other pick up points. The other nationalities were quieter so we did not invade their need for peace.

The American on the bus was a vehement anti-Trump person and did go on at length about him and her examples of his stupidity. After 20 mins of her dialogue (I think we all agreed with her anyhow), it was time to change the subject and despite our group efforts to get onto other topics and laugh and talk about life, after 10 mins she came back with her comments on Trump.

This made a few awkward silences as her monologue went on for 5-6 minutes again non-stop each time, with no chance to interrupt before someone forced a change of conversation again …. only for her to come back to it after a while. We started to exclude her from chats and addressed each other in chats face to face to shut her up.

Rude maybe, we had all said we agreed with her but we were all anti-trumped out from her by now.

Driving up Mt Nebo.

From sea level, we turned around and headed straight up into the mountains, that we had seen running alongside the horizon from the coach. A somewhat steep climb through fairly barren rocks and sandy land, but the views down the gorges and from the several hilltops were eye-catching.

Not much to see, apart from the land. I was trying to imagine how much had physically changed in the landscape since Moses’s times, if this was the area he hiked up to. We have just gone from a few feet below sea level to now 2,330 feet (710 metres) above sea level.

My ears popped several times on the ascent. By the time we got to the top, I had to do some nose pinching and blowing, to get my ears totally unblocked and back to normal under the air pressure.

Mt Nebo, Memorial Church of Moses.

We eventually arrived at a large car park and there ahead was the Memorial Church of Moses. The entrance area is rather modern but stylishly done with a small café (great coffee too) and gift shop.

There was a clean, modern slabbed walkway to the church with attractive carved rock signage on the way in Latin, English and Arabic.

The views along the walkway to the church are of the surrounding valleys, fields and landscape to the horizon and are beautiful. Olive trees, some green crops, and semi-barren land abounded but the best view of all is when you get to the front of the church.

You approach the church from the back so it is a case of walking round the church to get to the front entrance.

Here, there is an artistic metal Cross with a serpent entwined around it and is effectively the logo of the church and site.

There is a plaque and wall where it all happened. So, according to the Bible this site was where God said to Moses to look out from and he will see “the promised Land”. It is effectively a sweeping view towards Jericho in Israel, along the River Jordan Valley and onwards to Jerusalem and the Dead Sea.

On a clear day, apparently, you can just about see Jerusalem but today was not so clear, but I got the general idea.

So high up is the site that you can see for miles and miles. If it’s busy, you may have to wait your turn to step up to the parapet of the actual site and take in the view, but do, as it’s stupendous.

The church lies behind you and at first I did not quite get it. It is very modern, plainish and made of beige stone.  So where is the history I had heard about this ancient site?

It is not until you go inside that you realise that the church exterior is basically a covering over the ancient 4th Century Basilica and the rebuilt 6th Century one.

It only has the remains of its magnificent mosaic walls and floors and the internal columns now attractively preserved and put back semi in situ for all to see. The mosaics are huge and so intricate and the columns definitely weathered and worn but put back in a well styled form to give you an impression of how they looked and where they stood.

I wandered taking pics of the geometric designed mosaics. Many were also creative in that they were depictions of hunting scenes, flora and animals from the time.

They were so well restored and actually much more colourful and fuller in design than I imagined they would be. You walk on metal walkways over many areas to avoid walking onto the mosaics.

At one point a group of Koreans appeared and walked up to the altar with a priest in full robes and commenced singing Korean hymns for about 15 mins.

I had to video it and now have this serene scene on my memory card …. An amazing coincidence of timings to capture that.

There is a small but interesting museum next door to the church. It shows the history of the area and artefacts from centuries past all collected together in a mix of styles and times.

It even has a model of the church’s layout and the layout of the outbuildings through the ages beside the church

All finished we headed back to the coach stopping at the café to get a takeaway coffee on the way.
From here we re-boarded the coach and headed to Madaba about 30 mins away.

Madaba

Madaba has several sites and we disembarked to see them on foot as the driver dropped us off at each one. They are all near to each other with just a short but interesting walk between them.

The city itself is quite clean and well maintained but still has lots of touristy gift shops. Unusual that cars are more restricted here and that there are actually wide, new pavements everywhere, so walking is a doddle.

Basilica of St George, Madaba.

First off was the Basilica of St George which is the most famous building in Madaba.

There is evidence of settlement around Madaba from some 5,000 years ago and it is mentioned in the Bible. It became important around the 2nd century in Roman times and then again under the Byzantines in the 5th Century. Christians settled in the 4th Century. The church itself dates from the 6th Century and it is famous principally for its mosaic floor, more than anything else.

It was discovered only in 1896 when they uncovered a floor to reveal an intricate mosaic underneath. The mosaic design  was a representation of a map of the Palestine area right up to the Nile delta, in over 2 million coloured mosaic stones. Now it’s called the Madaba Mosaic Map and due to this, the church is often called the “Church of the Map”.

This church gets crowded and getting a decent pic is a real effort. With so many people crowding around the floor area I had to wait my turn, as I moved to the front, as people left. Luckily a large group decided to leave all at once and I got relative space to get in a few shots before the next mass of people descended on it.

It is not actually that big, despite its huge fame and is fairly non colourful, again despite its reputation. It is clear such an old artefact displaying the geography of a now very different area is priceless. I actually enjoyed the coloured murals on the walls more, which were very well preserved. Not many others seemed at all interested in them, so that gave me space to capture them.

It felt very Greek, with its plethora of brightly painted iconography and saints on the walls and arches – ok, it is a Greek Orthodox church I know. The pictures were very much like those I had seen in Orthodox churches in Eastern Europe and the Balkans.

One of my favourite pics was one of the Bible on its lectern but written Arabic. Never seen that before and it seemed an oddity to me in my naievity.

Then I realised …… of course, how else are Arab speaking Christians going to read a Bible?!

Wander around the outside as there are beautiful trees planted along its entrance area. There is a small open area, from which to take pics of the actual church, from the outside and recover from the crowds inside.

Madaba Archaeological Park.

This site is included in the Jordan pass. Click here for info. This is as it says, an area of buildings some in ruins, some still with walls and some big floor mosaics still pretty intact to look at. It’s interesting and has plenty of plaques to read up on what you are looking at, as it may not otherwise be obvious.

There was some intriguing ruins, especially the small chapel building. It’s so small that only a few people at a time can enter to see its perfectly restored mosaic floor. After a while, I was all mosaiced out and there were yet more mosaics on pedestal walls, a paved road area and yet more floor mosaics as I left.

It was good to see and was included in my Jordan pass, but I did feel that I had now seen enough of two major mosaic sites. Whilst this was nice enough, seeing yet more mosaics wasn’t adding more interest to my visit, so I glanced at the rest of the artefacts as I left.

St. John the Baptist Roman Catholic Church, Madaba.

This church is not on many people’s must see for Madaba, as the Basilica overshadows any trip to Madaba, but do get here if you can. The church itself is not the main attraction, although it is bigger than the Basilica. It is officially a church shrine to the beheading of St John, although this is not the actual site of the event.

It has a great gallery of photos taken over the last century of locals and life in the area. In the centre of the room is yet another …… yep, you got it …. mosaic. This one however has depictions of cities around the Mediterranean and Middle East with lovely figures and scenes in black and white inside the large rectangle. See how many cities you can identify.

Staff here are really helpful (and not wanting money for being so) and the entrance was 1 JD, or 2 JD to include the tower climb – cheap. There are caves under the church dating from Biblical times when a well was established here.

I did like the interior wall paintings and there was one marble plaque with a cross and Arabic writing on that caught my attention for its simplicity but creativity. Probably a tombstone but I just loved it.

The thing to do here, however, is climb the tower!

It is steep and towards the top gets narrow with no passing points so everyone has to be polite and let people climb or descend in sections.

You go around the bell itself – just hope no-one tolls the bells as you pass it or you will be deafened!

At the top is a fabulous view over the whole city and beyond, from what is the tallest tower in Madaba. Nearby is the big Mosque and pics of it from here are a must. Pity so many people had decided to graffiti their name and date on the walls as you climb but I guess that’s over-tourism for you.

Apostles Church, Madaba.

The next site was more out of the centre and would probably be a 10 mins walk, if we didn’t have the bus to take us.

This church is included in the Jordan pass. The church appeared closed when I approached with others from the coach. We entered the gateway and made our way to the kiosk and a guy there suddenly appeared and offered to take us to the front door and open up the church. Am not sure we just happened to visit when it was locked up and he reopened, or it is normal to be this quiet.

It looks like a warehouse from the outside but the huge sloping roof and single circular window over the entrance gave it away more as a church. When you get inside you realise that the façade and roof is really a huge protective covering, as the roof is brick vaulted with several all-encompassing spanning arches to protect the floor, covered in …. Yep, again you got it …. mosaics.

These were however full length and full restored, no missing sections filled in with concrete. They were the most preserved and complete I had seen all day and the figurines, animals and flowers depicted were exquisite.

The attendant showed us around by beckoning and there are again big metal walkways to walk over the mosaics, to get a better view of them like in Mt Nebo Church and the archaeological centre.

They can look quite dusty and dull, but the attendant at various points carefully splashed water onto them and brushed them and the colours lit up magically. Clearly these mosaics in their day must have been polished in some way for these colours to shine and show their amazing colours.

I got in several shots to show the before and after effec. We were even allowed to go beyond the barriers and walk next to the sectioned off floors to get real close-up to the mosaics. A nice gesture from the ticket collector who was either bored due to the quietness and wanted to show us around or this is normal …. Not sure which.

Well, that was Madaba well and truly completed. It felt a bit like an evangelical tour as it was mainly churches …. and mosaics …… but this is what Madaba is famous for. There is not a more heavily Christian city in this Muslim country and these were unique churches as well. If we had time I would have loved to see inside the Main Mosque as the gold topped turrets and domes looked splendid …. Another day for that one.

We arrived back in Amman at rush hour around 5:30pm and were caught up in slow moving traffic. Saying goodbye to various travellers as they got off at their drop off point was actually quite sad, as we all agreed we had thoroughly enjoyed our day. Definitely enough time to see everything and being taken door to door every time was of huge benefit.

My legs for once did not feel weary from too much walking!

March 2019