Jericho

Jericho sits more than 250 meters below sea level in the sun-baked Jordan Rift Valley, bordered by the jagged Judean Mountains to the west and the Jordan River near the northern tip of the Dead Sea. Walking its wide, dusty streets, the air carries the heavy warmth of an oasis, scented with jasmine, ripening citrus, and earth fed by the freshwater spring of Ein es-Sultan. Horse-drawn carts and yellow taxis roll gently past low stone houses and deep groves of date palms. Settlement here traces back beyond 9000 BCE at the mound of Tell es-Sultan, where the excavated Neolithic stone tower and mudbrick walls anchor Jericho as one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on earth. To the north lies Hisham’s Palace, an eighth-century Umayyad estate celebrated for its expansive, intact Tree of Life stone mosaic. West of town, a cable car glides up the sheer cliff face of the Mount of Temptation, terminating at the Greek Orthodox monastery embedded directly into the rock face where tradition records Jesus fasting during forty days in the wilderness. Local commerce thrives along the central market stalls, known across the region for plump Medjool dates, thin-skinned sweet bananas, and cups of black tea infused with fresh sage. In late autumn, the date harvest brings a festive hum as growers sort fruit in roadside packing houses. Because valley summer heat routinely tops forty degrees Celsius, plan trips between November and March, renting a bicycle to cover the flat distances between ruins comfortably.