Recently given UNESCO protection status, the city of Al-Salt in Jordania, famous for its 1890-1920s historic core of Ottoman era townhouses. Built on three hillsides around a central valley by Christians and Muslims with Italian and local labor to a Nazareth-Napolitan vernacular. 
Originally funded in 300 B.C. by Greek soldiers the town was razed by Mongolian armies in the 13th c. For centuries it was a Christian-Muslim enclave isolated on an important trade route surrounded by hostile tribes. Cooperation was the only way they could survive.
In the late 19th c. the city grew as the most important way point between the eastern and the western deserts. Prospering trade brought wealth to the townspeople who finally submitted to Ottoman rule. It was supposed to become the capital of Jordan but the honor went to Amman.
I would have hoped that the city would be enhanced by focusing on extending its historic core but now instead it seems it will get the same failed modernist-lite central square treatment that Amman got a few years ago.
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