Umm ar-Rasas Kastrum Project

a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2004. Many travelers and academics were attracted to the numerous ruins of the area. Indeed, a lot of expeditions were carried on starting from the beginning of 1800 till the mid of 1900. Umm ar-Rasas' settlement lies over a natural height of the plateau. The main remains cover an area of about 10 hectares and include:
- a roughly square fortified area, the ancient Roman castrum enclosed by buttressed walls with angular towers (about 50 m by 150 m), which is almost unexcavated;
- a later Byzantine settlement developed also on the outside of the northern walls (cover an area of about 200 m by 300 m). The discovered ruins show a clear religious feature. It is still possible to recognize many apsed churches, inside and outside the castrum, and arcs, epistyles and columns with engraved crosses. At a short distance from the town, a 15 meters square tower still survives and it is probably the only existing remain of the practice of the stylites (ascetic monks who spent time in isolation atop a column or tower). The identification of the site with the city of Kastron Mefaa (toponym already cited in the Bible and in the Roman-Byzantine and Arabian sources) has been possible thanks to a dedicatory inscription on the presbytery of Saint Stephan's church, dated at the period of Bishop Sergius II (785 A.D.), where the name appears twice. Kastron Mefaa was a strategic settlement closely associated with the frontier (limes) of the Roman-Byzantine Empire on the edge of the semi-arid steppe and possibly with the eastern branch of the incense route. In the tetrarchic period the castrum developed and gradually turned into a civil settlement with a residential neighborhood risen out of the walls in a very messy way and, inside the walls, with the building of new houses occupying common spaces and altering the roman orthogonal network. In this situation, churches and chapels, built by the Christian community, became the datum points. The Christian community development wasn't interrupted by the Arabian domination, on the contrary there was an increase of the religious architecture with several precious mosaics on churches' floors, one of which of special importance: the mosaic floor of the Church of Saint Stephen shows an incredible representation of towns in Palestine, Jordan and Egypt, including their identification. The elimination of human figures, and sometimes even the animal ones, was caused after 785 A.D. by the contemporary iconoclastic movement originated in the Byzantine Empire rather than the Islamic strictness.