Petra is located about 150 miles south of both Jerusalem and Amman, the capital of Jordan, and about midway between Damascus, Syria, and the Red Sea.
Petra has been referred to as the “Rose City” because of the color of the stones used in its buildings. The Nabataeans, who carved the ancient city of Petra into the cliffs in the 1st century AD, were much more focused on the facade. Using an early form of the technique known as rock-cut architecture, the Nabateans literally carved several of the city’s buildings out of the surrounding stone surfaces. Approximately 10,000 people lived there in the 1st and 2nd century AD, when main monuments were first created.
Petra was full of temples, theatres, gardens, tombs, villas, Roman baths, and the camel caravans and marketplace bustle befitting the centre of an ancient crossroads between east and west.
The Nabataeans were experts at surviving in the desert and they developed an impressive system of rock-cut channels and underground water pipes carried water from permanent springs and seasonal streams. The Nabataeans also developed a way to collect and store water in watertight holes or cisterns.
After the eighth century, when Petra was largely abandoned as a trading center, its stone structures were used for shelter by nomadic shepherds for several centuries.
Then, in 1812, the unique ruins of Petra were “discovered” by Swiss explorer, geographer and orientalist, Johann Ludwig Burckhardt. Petra was called by the 19th-century English biblical scholar John William Burgon a “rose-red city half as old as Time.”
In 1985, the Petra Archaeological Park was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site, and in 2007 it was named one of the new seven wonders of the world.
Ruins of Petra
