Madaba

About

Dating back to the Bronze Age, Madaba is mentioned in the Bible as a Moabite border city. From the 2nd through 7th centuries, it was an important stop on the King’s Highway trade route but was destroyed by an earthquake in 746 and abandoned. In 1880 a Christian community from Karak resettled the site, and uncovered numerous mosaics during their excavations of the city. The most famous of which is a 6th century map of the Holy Land on the floor of a Byzantine cathedral, which is now preserved within the confines of the Greek Orthodox Church of St. George. Comprised of millions of pieces of colored stone, it’s the earliest record of Byzantine Jerusalem. There hundreds of other mosaics scattered throughout the city, with some exceptional examples being found in the Church of the Virgin and the Apostles, and the several other Byzantine churches in Madaba’s extensive Archaeological Park and Museum.