Little remains of this once-great city; the earthquake of AD 747 did a pretty thorough job of turning Abila into a rock-strewn field. To date, much of Abila remains largely unexcavated and the site certainly isn’t set up for visitors. Of course, you don’t need a guide to find the Roman-Byzantine theatre or the scattered remains of columns from the markets, temples and baths lying around the site.
However, if you’re looking for a real Indiana Jones experience and have a torch, explore the eerie tomb caves that are carved into the hillsides surrounding the site. At one point the caves were full of corpses, but tomb raiders stripped them clean over the millennia. However, the spectacular frescoes adorning the walls and ceilings are marvellously intact, and made all the more dramatic by their remoteness.
The Abila site is close to the village of Quwayliba, about 10km north of Irbid. Buses leave from the north bus station in Irbid (less than JD1, 25 minutes) for Quwayliba; ask the driver to drop you off at the ruins.
