This research investigates Amman’s Cinema al-Khayyam as an abandoned architectural and cultural artifact embedded in its urban context. It explores the cinema’s evolving role from a vibrant social and political gathering space during Amman’s golden era of cinema to its current state of abandonment and decay. The modernist building’s history is situated within a broader discussion of abandoned cultural artifacts as vessels of collective memory whose meanings evolve over time. It asks how such spaces might be reactivated to both recall and propel unique forms of collective experience in the city.