The unique design of the Oval Plaza, also called the Oval Forum, cleverly connects two divergent main axes of the ancient city. The much older Sanctuary of Zeus faces northeast toward the original settlement core of Gerasa on the opposite hill (where the museum stands today). When, at the turn of the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, the new Cardo was laid out as the city's north-south connection and main street, it had to incorporate the central Sanctuary of Zeus in a representative way, which was not possible through a frontal approach because of the river valley and the rules of Roman urban planning with a rectangular street network.