Cafés in Jabal Amman & Rainbow Street

A walk east from the 1st Circle

Walking east from the 1st Circle you pass the renovated Rainbow Cinema, which gave the street its popular name, then the walled British Council and the Al Safadi mosque with its old minaret.¹³ On a side street to the right is the townhouse where King Talal lived before his accession and where King Hussein and Prince Hassan were born.¹

About 250 m past the British Council, Fawzi Malouf Street takes its second name, Souk Jara Street, from the street market held there every Friday in summer.¹⁴ The villa on its Rainbow Street corner, built in the late 1920s by the Karak architect Salim Al Odat, now holds the showrooms of Jordan River Designs and Bani Hamida.¹

Books@Café and Mango Street

At the far end, Omar bin al-Khattab Street is known as Mango Street, after the modernist Mango House built there in the late 1940s.¹ It leads to Books@Café, a bookshop and café-bar in a historic house, which opened in 1997 as what has been called the first internet café in the Middle East.¹⁵ Its outdoor terrace looks across to the Citadel hill and the old city.⁵ قهوة نجار (Qahwat Najjar) is on the same street, at No. 149.

Nearby, Wild Jordan, the ecotourism center of the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature designed by Ammar Khammash, has a café balcony with one of the best views in Amman, and an organic farmers' market, Souq al Shams, every Friday.¹

Shams el Balad and the side-street cafés

Shams el Balad began in 2000 as Maha Dahmash's small shop for handmade pots and plants. It became a café in 2015, when Hazem Malhas renovated his family's homes, and in May 2017 it moved into the neighboring historic house of the Shuraiqi family.⁶ At No. 69 Mu'ath bin Jabal Street it opens daily, 10:00–00:00, is smoke-free and takes cards.

Geisha Coffee sits a short walk from Rainbow Street; a 2025 guide to working cafés found its upstairs quieter than the small, noisy ground floor, with free Wi-Fi and plenty of sockets.⁷ Strada (سترادا) at No. 15 Muhammad Rashid Rida Street has Wi-Fi and outdoor tables, Fruit Salad on Al-Bohteri Street has outdoor seats, and Nara Cafe on Rainbow Street allows smoking.

Traffic and timing

The city rebuilt Rainbow Street in the 2000s, and it draws large crowds on summer evenings after sunset.⁸ Driving it on a weekend evening can take half an hour for a few hundred meters, so walk in from the 1st Circle instead.¹