About Madaba

Madaba, the City of Mosaics, is best known for a collection of Byzantine-era mosaics. The discovery of the magnificent mosaics began in the 19^th century when they started to build their houses and churches on the Byzantine ruins.

History of Madaba

Under the Roman rule, Madaba became the typical provincial town, featuring colonnaded streets, important temples and other beautiful buildings, large water cistern and a city wall. During the Byzantine period, many mosaic floors were created from the classical Hellenistic-Roman tradition. Madaba’s heyday continued until the 8^th century under the Muslim Umayyads who were tolerant of Christianity. After a severe earthquake in AD 746, the city was abandoned. It only came back to life at the end of the 19^th century when Christian Arabs moved from Karak to Madaba.

Madaba Map

The mosaic map of Madaba is perhaps the old evidence of ancient cartography. It was discovered at the end of the 19^th century during the construction of St George’s Church. The mosaic map was probably 15.6m by 6m size and consisted of an estimated 2.3 million mosaic stones. Crafted in AD 560, the map has 157 remaining Greek inscriptions of names of places, territories of the tribes of Israel, quotations from the Bible and commentaries, as well as the cityscape of Jerusalem. The mosaic map was not conceived as a practical orientation aid for pilgrims but as a complex work of Christian art with several layers of meaning.