Pella, and the modern village of Tabqat Fahl, lie nestled in some of the country's most luxuriant scenery, less than five kilometers east of the Jordan River. Pella, Decapolis city of the Roman Empire, is an archaeologist's paradise.
Pella's remnants provide examples of man-made artifacts from the Paleolithic, Neolithic and Calcolithic, Bronze, Iron, Hellenistic, Roman-Byzantine and Islamic periods.
Some scholars maintain that when Alexander the Great marched through the site of Pella en route to Egypt, he laid the city's foundations. But it is more likely that Pella was founded by one of the Seleucid rulers and burgeoned shortly after Alexander's death in 332 BC.
A Roman Odeon to hold 400 spectators was erected during the 1st Century AD on the banks of Wadi Jirm, which runs through the settlement of Pella. With its pink and yellow blocks of stones it later became part of the temple and forum complex. The shrine, alongside a stream, was the largest of the temples build at Pella and on its site a large Byzantine church was constructed.
A large number of the remains visible today come from the Byzantine period, such as the stunning black basalt theatre, the basilica and adjacent courtyard strewn with nicely carved black sarcophagi, the colonnaded main street and a side street lined with shops, an underground mausoleum, two baths, a nymphaeum, a city gate and the faint on outlines of what was a massive hippodrome.
Besides the excavated ruins from the Graeco - Roman period, Pella offers visitors the opportunity to see the remains of Chalcolithic settlement from the 4th millennium BC, evidence of Bronze and Iron age walled cities, Byzantine churches, early Islamic residence and a small medieval mosque.