Hammamat Ma'in

Hammamat Main is a dramatic thermal waterfall complex in the Madaba Governorate of Jordan, set in a deep desert canyon 264 metres below sea level between the Dead Sea and the Madaba plateau, where hot mineral springs containing chloride-rich water at temperatures up to 63 degrees Celsius cascade as natural waterfalls directly into cool pools formed by the cold Wadi Zarqa Main river below. The visual spectacle of steaming hot mineral cascades plunging into cold pool water in a canyon of basalt and sandstone, surrounded by the Jordan Valley desert, has attracted bathers since antiquity — the Herodian thermal tradition at Callirhoe, near Hammamat Main, is historically documented as the site where Herod the Great was brought to bathe for his terminal illness. The proximity of the Dead Sea, the Moses Memorial Church on Mount Nebo, and the Madaba mosaic map of the Holy Land make Hammamat Main the central thermal destination in a region of extraordinary religious and archaeological concentration.