Jordan Times
Monday, October 8, 2001
US Ambassador Gnehm attends opening of Madaba Visitors Centre
AMMAN (JT) — Madaba opened the doors of a new Visitors Centre on Saturday which will provide local and foreign tourists with information about the city's many points of interest.Located in a refurbished old house, the centre also houses a conference room to be used for educational purposes.
The Madaba of the Bible is today the small town of Madaba, 30 kilometers south of Amman. Best known for its Byzantine mosaics, the town houses the earliest surviving original map of the Holy Land, which was made around AD 560. Attending the opening ceremony were Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Taleb Rifai, US Ambassador Edward W. Gnehm, French Ambassador Bernard Emie, Madaba Governor Qassem Abu Heija and other officials
The Madaba Visitors Centre is the culmination of the coordination between the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, the American Centre for Oriental Research (ACOR) — supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) — and l'Institut Francais d'Archaeologie du Proche-Orient (IFAPO).
ACOR provided technical assistance and furnished the Visitors Centre with maps of Madaba and photos of the towns old houses.
In remarks he made during the ceremony, Ambassador Gnehm highlighted the US government's support, through USAID, of archaeological preservation in Jordan, and the important link with economic opportunities for Jordanians. Gnehm also noted that ACOR's pioneering work in restoring and preserving important churches and the development of the archaeological park in Madaba — as well as throughout Jordan — has contributed significantly to the development of the tourism sector in the country.