Day trips from Amman
12 h route3 stopsBest: Petra needs a full day and an early start. Jerash works as a half dayUpdated July 2026
Petra is about three hours from Amman on the Desert Highway and is perfectly possible in a day, though tight: it deserves more. What is a comfortable half-day trip is Jerash, an hour away, which almost nobody expects and which surprises everyone.
Before organising anything it’s worth looking at the Jordan Pass, because it includes entry to Petra, to Jerash and to forty-odd other sites, and also the cost of the tourist entry visa. The exact conditions are on its official site and are worth reading before buying flights.
The route, stop by stop
3 STOPS- 01
Jerash
Nobody expects a Roman provincial city this complete in Jordan, and Jerash, ancient Gerasa, is among the best preserved anywhere. You enter through Hadrian’s Arch, from AD 129, and walk the full cardo maximus, the colonnaded main street, with cart ruts still marked in the original paving.
The most singular feature is the oval forum, an elliptical plaza ringed with Ionic columns with no equivalent in the Roman world. There are also two theatres, temples to Zeus and Artemis, and a nymphaeum.
The city was buried in sand after an eighth-century earthquake and wasn’t excavated until the 1920s, which is why it survived so complete.
- 02
Petra
They carved the façades straight into the pink sandstone of the cliffs. Petra was the capital of the Nabataeans, a trading people who controlled the incense and spice routes, and their wealth came from that: the Treasury, Al-Khazneh, is a mausoleum, not a treasury: the name comes from a Bedouin legend.
You enter through the Siq, a natural gorge over a kilometre long with walls up to eighty metres that narrows until the Treasury appears all at once through a slit.
What almost nobody realises is the scale: Petra has eight hundred catalogued monuments, and the Monastery, up above, is larger still than the Treasury but demands climbing eight hundred steps.
- 03
The Baptism Site
UNESCO recognises it as Bethany beyond the Jordan, identified as the site of Jesus’s baptism, on the east bank of the river. There are remains of Byzantine churches, baptismal pools and a pilgrimage area beside the water. What strikes you most isn’t archaeological: the Jordan here is an extremely narrow river, a few metres across, and the far bank is already the West Bank, with pilgrims on the other side visible and audible. It’s a controlled military zone and can only be visited with an official guide at set times.
Frequently asked
Can you see Petra in a day from Amman?
You can, but it’s about three hours each way and Petra is enormous: a single day covers the Siq, the Treasury and the Street of Facades, little more. If your trip allows, sleeping in Wadi Musa and giving it a full day changes things considerably.
What is the Jordan Pass?
A pass bundling entry to over forty tourist sites (Petra, Jerash and Wadi Rum among them) and including the cost of the tourist entry visa. It has purchase and stay conditions worth reading on its official site before buying, because they affect when you need to get it.