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Petra

✨ The rose-red city

Petra is an ancient city in southern Jordan, set among mountains of red sandstone. Inhabited since prehistoric times, it became the capital of the Nabataeans and an important caravan centre between Arabia, Egypt and the Mediterranean. The Nabataeans developed the city especially from the last centuries BC into the first centuries AD, benefiting from trade in goods such as incense, spices and textiles. Much of Petra was built from local stone, while other monuments were carved directly into the cliffs.

The most famous entrance is the Siq, a narrow natural gorge that leads into the ancient city. Among its best-known monuments are the Khazneh, often called the Treasury, the Urn Tomb, the Palace Tomb and the Ad Deir, or Monastery. Their façades combine Nabataean traditions with influences from Hellenistic architecture. Petra was therefore not simply a collection of rock-cut monuments: it was a large urban centre with temples, public buildings, tombs and spaces for trade.

Water was essential to life in this dry region, and the Nabataeans built an elaborate system to collect, store and distribute it. Channels, cisterns, reservoirs, dams and aqueducts helped capture seasonal rainfall, reduce the danger of floods and supply people, animals, gardens and cultivated land. This hydraulic system made substantial settlement possible in an otherwise arid environment. Petra later came under Roman rule in AD 106 and remained an important centre during the Roman and Byzantine periods, although its importance gradually declined as trade routes changed.

The city was eventually largely abandoned, while local Bedouin communities continued to know and use the area. Petra became known to the wider European world after the Swiss traveller Johann Ludwig Burckhardt visited it in 1812. Archaeological research has since revealed the complexity of the ancient city and its surrounding landscape. In 1985, UNESCO added Petra to the World Heritage List, recognizing its exceptional architecture, archaeology and evidence of Nabataean civilization.

💡 Did you know?

Did you know that in the past, the inhabitants of Petra, the Nabataeans, were the kings of water in the desert? They invented a brilliant system of channels and cisterns to collect every tiny drop of rain. Thanks to this, Petra was like a green garden with fountains and gardens, even though it almost never rained there! It was a real magical oasis.

To enter Petra, you must cross the 'Siq', a natural corridor between two giant cliffs 80 meters high. At the end of this path, you suddenly discover 'The Treasury', the most famous monument in the world. It is called that because it was once thought that a pharaoh's treasure was hidden in the stone urn at the top!

The facades of Petra were not built with bricks; they were carved from top to bottom directly into the mountain! The colors of the rock are incredible: you can see mixes of pink, yellow, orange, and even purple forming magnificent color waves on the walls, as if a giant had painted on the cliffs.