Petra, in western Jordan, is a fascinating ancient city about 80 kilometres south of the Dead Sea, which was half-build, half-carved into stone, bearing strikingly beautiful examples of Eastern and Hellenistic architecture.

Petra means ‘rock’ in Latin and it is also said that Roman emperor Hadrian named it Hadriane Petra, after his own name. The ancient city was lost to the modern western world for some 500 years after the Crusades until rediscovered by Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, a Swiss explorer, in 1812 after he pretended to be an Arab and convinced a local guide to take him there.

Located between the Red Sea and the Dead Sea, Petra was once an important centre of trade and commerce and had a sophisticated system of water conservation and dams that provided water to the arid region. This was as remarkable achievement of the Nabataeans as was their skill in carving this city out of sheer rock face more than 2000 years ago!

Besides these two outstanding features of Petra that deservingly cast it among the Seven Wonders of the World to survive since ancient times, there are other aspects of this desert city that make it a tourist attraction. Petra also boasts elaborate tomb and temple architecture, sites that are of religious significance to different religions, remains of copper mines, churches and other buildings.

Let us look briefly at the history of Petra before moving on to the sites that make this red city of the desert a world heritage site.

In 1200BC, the area was populated by Edomites till the Nabataeans moved in and the Edomites moved elsewhere. Petra reached prominence under the Nabataeans who are said to have migrated there in the sixth century BC from north-eastern Arabia and it became an important centre of trade.

They also constructed some of Petra’s most impressive structures, such as the Treasury, the Great Temple and the Qasr el-Bint el-Faroun was well as an elaborate system for conserving water and channelling it around the city by the use of terracotta piping.

Roman general Pompey made it a Roman colony around 63 BC and in 105-106 AD, Roman emperor Trajan made Petra into the Roman province of Arabia Petraea, and it remained peacefully as an ally of Rome.

This Roman period saw the influence of Roman architectural designs on Petra, such as the construction of an impressive classical theatre and a main street. Christianity arrived in the region in fourth century and, besides the construction of churches, some existing tombs and temples at Petra were converted into churches and monasteries.

By the seventh century, Islam had arrived in the region but Petra was not even a shadow of its former self and it slowly became a lost city after the Crusades.

Having discussed the history of this ancient city, let us look more closely at the remains of Petra that people marvel at today.

The city is spread over a very large area that is packed with remains of tombs, temples, sanctuaries, altars to gods and churches, and only part of these have been excavated so far.

Petra had been a city of great religious significance, related to many religions, throughout its history.

Among the rock-cut temples and tombs showing traces of both Hellenistic and Nabataean architectural are ‘royal tombs’, including the Khasneh, the Urn Tomb, the Palace Tomb and the Corinthian Tomb, and the Deir (monastery), while sacrificial and other religious high places can be found on Jebels Madbah, M’eisrah, Khubtha, Habis and Al Madras. High above, on Jabal Harun, is said to be the tomb of Aaron, the brother of Prophet Moses.

Siq: You can enter this ancient city through a long narrow, winding passage, the Siq, ripped in a rock during an ancient earthquake. Once the waters of a stream flowed between the gap, turning the sharp edges of the wall smooth and visitors today see it as beautifully-coloured sandstone cliffs about 150m high on each side.

The Treasury: Emerging from the Siq, you are right in front of the most famous landmark of Petra, the Treasury. It was featured in the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, as the building housing the Grail but most of you have probably not seen the flick because it was made before you were born.

Over 45 meters tall, the Treasury was carved out of the red and yellow sandstone in a top-down fashion, and was built as a royal tomb. The reason it is called ‘the Treasury’ is that people believed there was a treasure, a very large one, hidden in it and it has been raided for this reason a good number of times, but with no luck.

The purpose of the Treasury remains a mystery — it was probably a temple, a tomb, a royal residenceor just about anything else! Its façade has two levels, decorated with columns, classical rooflines and sculptures. Atop the façade is an eagle, a Nabataean and Greek male deity symbol.

The central figure on the upper level may be the fertility goddess of Petra, El-Uzza, associated to the Egyptian goddess Isis.

A colossal doorway dominates the outer court and leads to an inner chamber of 12 square meters.

The Monastery: The Monastery is an hour’s climb northwest of the city centre on an ancient rock-cut path of about 800 steps.

It is a beautifully carved and very huge — even the doorway is several stories tall! But it wasn’t a monastery, like the Treasury, the name given to it by discoverers does not reflect its usage. It was probably a Nabataean temple.

Around 50m high and 45m wide, the facade is flat on the lower level and deeply carved on the upper level, with engaged columns and two half-pediments flanking a central urn. The flat plaza in front was likely to have been used to house crowds at religious ceremonies. The interior consists of a single room with double staircases leading up to a niche.

Then there are the remarkable remains of the extensive water engineering system, city walls and freestanding temples, garden terraces, water cisterns and reservoirs. And when you consider that these were built and carved by people who lived in the fourth century BC to the first century AD, these structures become all the more fascinating.