| The
spectacular rose-red city The most famous attraction in Jordan is the Nabataean city of Petra, some 262 kilometers or 160 miles south of Amman. The Victorian traveller and poet, Dean Burgon, gave Petra a description which holds to this day-“Match me such a marvel save in Eastern clime, a rose-red city as old as time.” More than 2000 years ago Petra was used as a temporary refuge by nomadic Nabataean Arabs, Bedouins who came north out of Arabia, From a few caves in a rocky outcrop, easy to defend, the Nabataeans created Petra as a fortress city. Petra still forms part of the domain of the Bedouin. The visitor finds them waiting with their horses and camels for the unforgettable trip into the rose-red city. |
  The Treasury (El Khazneh) |
 Um Tomb |
 Natural Colored Sandstone |
 The Monastery (El Deir) |
To reach the city the visitor travels on foot, for elderly and
handicapped people, or by horse-drawn carriage through the awesome
”Siq”, an immense crack in the Nubian sandstone. It is a winding, one-Kilometer-long fissure between overhanging cliffs that seem to meet more than 300 feet over head. Near the end of the passage, the SIQ, with great style, makes one last turn and out of the gloom in the towering brightness appears Petra’s most impressive monument, el Khazneh -The Treasury. |
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| This, one of the most elegant remains of antiquity, carved out of the solid rock from the side of the mountain, is nearly 140 feet high and 90 feet wide. | ||
| Beyond
el Khazneh the visitor is surrounded on both sides by hundreds of
Petra’s carved and built structures, soaring temples, elaborate
royal tombs, a carved Roman theater seating ( 3,000) large and small
houses, burial chambers, banquet halls, water channels and
reservoirs, baths, monumental staircases, cultic installations,
markets, arched gates, public buildings and paved streets. But Petra is not only about the Nabataeans, Within a fifteen-minute drive of Petra the visitor can walk through 8,000-year-old excavated Stone Age villages at Beidha and Basta, wander among the ruins of settlements of the biblical Edomites, or explore the sprawling remains of the Roman legionary fortress at Udruh. |
 Ornately Carved Top of the Monastery |
(AMMAN - JERASH - DECAPOLIS ERA - JORDAN - WADI RUM - AQABA - THE DEAD SEA - MUJIB WILDLIFE RESERVE - DANA NATURE RESERVE - SHAUMARI NATURE RESERVE - AJLOUN NATURE RESERVE - AZRAQ WETLAND RESERVE - BIRD WATCHING - THE GULF OF AQABA - BETHANY BEYOND JORDAN)
EGYPT - LEBANON - SYRIA