The Amman Citadel on Citadel Hill is an archaeological site on an L-shaped hill towering over Downtown Amman, in the central part of the capital of Jordan. The Amman Citadel is considered to be among the world's oldest continuously inhabited places. Evidence of inhabitance since the Neolithic period has been found and the hill was fortified du…The Amman Citadel on Citadel Hill is an archaeological site on an L-shaped hill towering over Downtown Amman, in the central part of the capital of Jordan. The Amman Citadel is considered to be among the world's oldest continuously inhabited places. Evidence of inhabitance since the Neolithic period has been found and the hill was fortified during the Bronze Age. The hill became the capital of the Kingdom of Ammon, sometime after 1200 BCE. It later came under the sway of major powers such as the Assyrian, Babylonian, Ptolemaic, Seleucid, Roman, Byzantine, and Umayyad empires. During classical antiquity the city expanded far beyond Citadel Hill, which was given the role of an acropolis. After the Umayyads came a period of decline and for much of the following millenium, the former city became an abandoned pile of ruins only sporadically used by Bedouins and seasonal farmers; this hiatus came to an end in 1878, when the Ottoman Empire resettled there displaced Circassian refugees.
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