A Nabataean trading capital carved into rose sandstone, entered through a kilometre-long crack in a cliff. Far larger than the one facade everyone photographs.
What it is
The capital of the Nabataeans, an Arab trading people who controlled the incense routes between southern Arabia and the Mediterranean from around the fourth century BC. At its height perhaps 20,000 people lived here in a bowl of sandstone canyons, and the Nabataeans’ real genius was not the carving but the water: an engineered system of dams, cisterns and ceramic pipes that made a city possible in a desert receiving 150mm of rain a year.
Rome annexed it in 106 AD, the trade routes shifted, an earthquake wrecked it in 363, and it emptied. Bedouin knew it; Europe did not see it again until a Swiss traveller talked his way in disguised as a pilgrim in 1812.
Bigger than the photograph
The image everyone has is Al-Khazneh, the Treasury — 40 metres of Hellenistic facade at the end of the Siq. It is a tomb, it was never a treasury, and it is roughly the first two per cent of the site.
Petra covers about 264 square kilometres, of which the walkable core is a good six to eight kilometres end to end with substantial climbs. Beyond the Treasury: the Street of Facades, a Roman theatre cut into rock seating 8,500, the Royal Tombs along the eastern cliff, a colonnaded street, a Byzantine church with intact mosaics, and — up 800 rock-cut steps — Ad-Deir, the Monastery, which is larger than the Treasury and reached by far fewer people.
The Monastery climb takes 45 to 60 minutes and is the single best thing in Petra. Do it early or late; the middle of the day on those steps in summer is punishing.
The High Place of Sacrifice is a shorter climb with the best overview of the whole basin.
Practical
One day is not enough and most first visits are one day. The Jordan Pass includes two-day entry, and the second day is where the site stops being a queue and starts being a place.
Arrive at opening, around six or seven. The Siq is quiet, the light is right, and the Treasury is briefly free of people.
The Siq is a 1.2km natural fissure, in places three metres wide with 80-metre walls. Walk it; the horse carriages are noisy, expensive and remove the entire point.
Petra by Night — the Siq and Treasury lit by 1,500 candles, three evenings a week — is atmospheric and heavily attended. Opinions are split. It is a separate ticket.
Little Petra, eight kilometres north, is free, takes an hour and is almost empty.
The uncomfortable bit
Animal welfare at Petra has been a documented problem for years — horses, donkeys and camels used for rides through the site, and the donkeys on the Monastery steps in particular. There is an on-site veterinary clinic and conditions have improved, but the straightforward answer is to walk. It is not a difficult walk.
Children selling postcards and offering to guide you are a persistent feature; whether to engage is a judgement, but buying does keep them out of school.
More Ancient Wonders
Machu Picchu
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Angkor
The capital of the Khmer Empire, a thousand square kilometres of temples and hydraulic engineering in the jungle, of which Angkor Wat is one building.
The Pyramids of Giza
The only survivor of the seven wonders of the ancient world, on the edge of a city of twenty million, and about 4,500 years old.