Amman — A City of Street Art and Culture
Last week, while walking through the streets of Amman, Jordan, I looked up to take a picture of the scenary around me, and behold, a fantastic street art was looking down at me.
Amman, otherwise known as the white city, is the world's oldest and most consistently inhabited city, initially founded in 7250 BC. It is called the white city because its houses are made from limestone — By law, all residential facades must be covered in limestone in Amman.
nowadays, Amman's old buildings and districts are covered with street art representing the city's culture, diversity, and youth. The entire town is like a vast museum plastered with art on every corner.
It hasn't always been like this. Amman's walls used to be covered with spray-painted quotes, cheers for sports teams, and the most famous sentence of them all, "To fence your farms," followed by a random phone number. Sometimes they'll spray paint to advertise for a nearby business.
Graffiti used to be considered an act of vandalism around the city. Around 2017–2018, graffiti artists started painting the old city's pale, boring gray walls. Some old buildings lost their limestone facade, and the grey concrete was showing underneath them.
Suddenly, the ancient streets were live again and full of vibrant colors.
Artists didn't stop at painting walls. They painted everything they got their hands on. Ceilings, streets, and stairs got their own art and colors. Old gray cement stairs connecting the old neighborhoods became colorful, cheerful stairs and a destination for tourists and locals to take selfies.
