Petra
Petra
Distance by Road: 230 kilometers south of Amman – 120 km from Aqaba.
The most treasured national site in Jordan and now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The ancient site lies in the dramatic barrier of the rose-red colored mountains that run beside the Rift Valley of Wadi Araba, from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba.
Petra was first established around the 6th Century BC by the Nabatean Arabs, a nomadic tribe who settled in south Jordan for more than 2000 years ago. From a few caves in a rocky outcrop, easy to defend, the Nabateans created Petra as fortress city and defied the Roman Empire until 106 AD.
They laid the foundations of a commercial empire and dominated the trade routes of ancient Arabia, levying tolls and sheltering caravans laden with Indian spices and silks, African ivory and animal hids. The Nabatean Kingdom endured for centuries, and Petra became widely admired for its refined culture, massive architecture and ingenious complex of dams and water channels.
Despite successive attempts by the Seleucid king Antigonus, the Roman emperor Pompey and Herod the Great to bring Petra under the control of their respective empires, Petra remained largely in Nabatean hands until around 100AD, when the Roman Emperor Trajan annexed the kingdom, and myriad rulers followed in his wake. It was still inhabited during the Byzantine period, when the former Roman empire moved its focus east to Constantinople, but declined in importance thereafter. The Crusaders constructed a fort there in the 12th century, but soon withdrew, leaving Petra to the local people until the early 19th century, when it was visited by the Swiss explorer Johann Brudkcardt in 1812.
The Tour: The only way to reach the site is on foot, horse-ride or horse-drawn carriages. The tour starts from the Tourist Center through the narrow (1 Km) Siq or gorge with towering rock walls soaring to 200 meters. The walls of the siq glow with bands of color ranging from pearly white to softest yellow, gold to red, carmine, and mauve.
As visitors emerge from the narrow Siq, they are confronted by the magnificent and dramatic facade of the most famous monument in Petra, the Treasury. The hard dramatic colors of the Siq do not prepare one for the glowing richness and perfection of the Treasury; carved out of the solid rock from the side of the mountain nearly 140 feet high and 90 feet wide. The Treasury was used as the backdrop for the climax of the film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
Various walks and climbs reveal literally hundreds of buildings, facades, tombs, baths, funerary halls, soaring temples, royal tombs, markets, paved streets and haunting rock drawings and reliefs, the 3000 seat theatre from the early 1st Century AD, a Palace Tomb in the Roman style. Visitors can also climb a good 200 meters on stairs carved out in the mountain rocks to the 1st Century Deir or Monastery.
Little Petra
Little Petra or “Siq Al-Barid is a miniature version of Petra. It is a 10 minute drive north of Petra. The site is located at the point where ancient caravan routes met. Little Petra is a classic temple and has a miniature siq (350 meters long). The site has tombs, water channels, tombs and the remains of frescos dating from the 1st century AD.