Petra

About Petra

Petra, called Raqmu by its builders, is the rose-sandstone capital of the Nabataeans, an Arab people who settled here in the 4th century BC and made the city their capital in the 2nd century BC. It grew rich on the caravan trade between Arabia, the Levant and the Mediterranean and held some 20,000 people in the 1st century AD, before Rome annexed it in 106 AD. The earthquake of 363 wrecked much of the city and its water system; Petra lived on through the Byzantine period, then faded from the outside world until the Swiss traveller Burckhardt reached it in 1812. UNESCO listed it in 1985, and in 2007 it was voted one of the New Seven Wonders of the World. The visit starts at the Visitor Centre in Wadi Musa and drops into the Siq, a winding gorge about 2 km long and in places only 3–4 m wide, with Nabataean water channels cut along its walls. The Siq opens onto the Treasury (Al-Khazneh), Petra's best-known facade, 24 m wide and 37 m tall. Beyond it come the Street of Facades, the rock-cut Theatre, the Royal Tombs on the cliff to the right (Urn, Silk, Corinthian and Palace tombs), then the Colonnaded Street with the Temple of the Winged Lions and the Great Temple, ending at Qasr al-Bint in the heart of the city. From there the fit climb roughly 800 steps to Ad-Deir, the largest facade in Petra, or take the trail to the High Place of Sacrifice. Petra is as remarkable for its engineering as for its facades: dams, channels and cisterns gathered the scarce rain of a semi-arid plateau at about 810 m and let a city of this size flourish among the mountains. Today the Bedul Bedouin and the people of Wadi Musa provide most of the services inside the site.

Where:

Wadi Musa, Jordan