Al Qastal

Now this site is currently hard to find. There are absolutely no street signs, Google Maps does not know it, my car GPS does not know it. I ended up driving slowly up and down the side road towards the airport, looking out for anything that looked ancient and archeological. Excuse my, have you seen the lost city of Al-Qastal ? It might have been lost again ! Luckily, there is a modern settlement with the same name, and somewhere in between the ruined modern houses are the ancient ruined houses ! As it turned out, the site is not really prepared for touristic visits. Like, totally not prepared. There are no signs, fences, pathes, visitor, keepers or anything. Some archeological clean-up has taken place, but that's it. You are completely on your own here - which is kind of cool, as you can unleash your inner explorer and see what interesting things turn up.
So what's to see ? Quite a lot, actually. The site is bigger than most of the desert castle sites, comparable to Umm'er-Rasas (minus the mosaics - but who knows what lies still hidden ?). A lot of the buildings are still walkable, and it is nice to prowl around the half-ruined houses and speculate about their meaning. However, I could not detect any OUV-worthy aspect - all in all, it is just one more ruined settlement,and there are plenty in Jordan.
The good thing, if you know where to find it, you can visit …