First published: 31/08/23.

Riccardo Quaranta 1

Gadara

Gadara (On tentative list)

Gadara by Riccardo Quaranta

I visited Gadara during my trip to Jordan in August 2023.

I had a rented car and so it has been relatively easy to drive to the three Decapolis cities that are currently TWHS (Abila, Gadara and Pella) in northern Jordan. Gadara is the largest and best managed of them. There is a small museum, reconstructed buildings, the ruins are quite extensive and there are even underground tunnels that can be visited. Overall, the site is worth a visit even for non-WHS aficionados.

Considering the distance among the cities and the size of these archaeological site, it is quiet easy to visit all of them in one day, especially if driving from Jerash, rather than Amman. 

I decided to split my visits in 2 consecutive days, though, as I added also visits to Umm El-Jimal and As-Salt.

Other than these logistic details, there is not much to add to the review that Wojciech left a few years ago. Not much has changed since.

The only aspect that I want to highlight is that, in my opinion, among the Decapolis cities in northern Jordan, Gadara is the only one that might have a tiny chance of becoming a WHS one day. As I stated in my review of Abila, instead of nominating each city individually with little chance for inscription, perhaps proposing a serial site with all the Decapolis cities together (maybe even including Amman's citadel, the ancient original Philadelphia) would have a much greater chance of inscription.

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