Petra Travel Guide Visit Petra Jordan Best Place to Visit Petra Jordan - Attractions
Petra Travel Guide Visit Petra Jordan Best Place to Visit Petra Jordan - Attractions
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00:00Petra is an ancient city that lies in present-day Jordan and dates back to the 4th century B.C.
00:06Ruins of the once-great metropolis and trading center now serve as an important
00:10archaeological site and tourist attraction. Petra is located about 150 miles south of both
00:16Jerusalem and Amman, the capital of Jordan, and about midway between Damascus, Syria,
00:21and the Red Sea, making it ideally suited as a hub of commerce in the area.
00:26The site is considered significant by historians and archaeologists alike because of its beautiful
00:31rock-cut architecture and innovative water management system, the latter of which made
00:35the region inhabitable, given that it is surrounded by desert and rugged, mountainous terrain.
00:40Petra has also been referred to as the Rose City because of the color of the stones used
00:45in its buildings. The ancient city of Petra, Jordan, is located in a remote valley, nestled
00:50among sandstone mountains and cliffs. It was purported to be one of the places where Moses
00:55struck a rock and water gushed forth. Later, the Nabataeans and Arab tribe made it their capital,
01:01and during this time it flourished, becoming an important trade center, especially for spices.
01:06Noted carvers, the Nabataeans chiseled dwellings, temples, and tombs into the sandstone,
01:11which changed color with the shifting sun. In addition, they constructed a water system that
01:16allowed for lush gardens and farming. At its height, Petra reportedly had a population of
01:2030,000. The city began to decline, however, as trade routes shifted. A major earthquake in
01:27363 CE caused more difficulty, and after another tremor hit in 551, Petra was gradually abandoned,
01:34although rediscovered in 1912. It was largely ignored by archaeologists until the late 20th
01:40century, and many questions remain about the city. The city of Petra was established as a trading
01:45post by the Nabataeans, an Arab-Bedouin tribe indigenous to the region in what is now southwestern
01:50Jordan. The Nabataeans living and trading in Petra soon accumulated a significant amount of wealth,
01:55and an envious Greek empire attacked the city in 312 BC. This event marks the first reference to
02:01Petra in recorded history. The Nabataeans successfully fought back the Greek invaders
02:06by taking advantage of the mountainous terrain surrounding the city. The mountains effectively
02:10served as a natural wall buttressing Petra. However, the Greek incursion was not the last
02:16time the city would come under attack. In fact, the Romans would invade Petra in 106 AD and
02:22ultimately force the Nabataeans to surrender. The Roman Empire annexed the newly gained territory
02:28and changed its name to Arabia Petraea. They continued to rule over the city for more than
02:33250 years until the middle of the 4th century AD, when an earthquake destroyed many of its buildings.
02:39The Byzantines eventually took control of the region and governed Petra for some 300 years.
02:44By the beginning of the 8th century AD, Petra was largely abandoned and no longer a significant
02:49location commercially, politically, and slash, or culturally. Although no longer an important city,
02:56Petra has been noted by historians and archaeologists for its unique architecture as
03:00well as a specific innovation made by the Nabataean Bedouins that established the city.
03:05Given the rugged, mountainous terrain that surrounds it, Petra wouldn't seem like a logical
03:09place to build a city. However, the Nabataeans took advantage of this geography as they erected
03:15its key structures. Using an early form of the technique known as rock-cut architecture,
03:20the Nabataeans literally carved several of the city's buildings out of the surrounding stone
03:24surfaces. As the Nabataean culture evolved, and as the Romans and the Byzantines later sought to
03:30leave their own marks on the city, the architecture of Petra began to take on a mix of the different
03:35cultures that occupied it. Large and ornate tombs built by the Nabataeans eventually gave way to
03:40Christian churches constructed by the Byzantines, who considered Petra the capital of the province
03:45of Palestine. During this evolution, while the Romans ruled the city after the Nabataeans and
03:50before the Byzantines, the Petro-Roman road was built. This served as the main thoroughfare of
03:55Petra, and ornate gates were built, in Roman style, to mark the entrance to the city. However,
04:01the Nabataeans' influence over the city's design and structure was not completely eliminated by its
04:06subsequent rulers. As desert dwellers, the Nabataeans had long struggled during seasons
04:12in which rainfall in the region was limited. When the tribe built Petra, though, they developed a
04:17unique system of conduits, dams, and cisterns to harvest, store, and distribute rainwater for
04:23year-round use. At certain times of year, the area around the city was prone to flooding. However,
04:29the Nabataeans were able to effectively control these floods using dams and, therefore,
04:34the city's water supply. This meant that they could reside in the city even during periods of
04:39drought. It also improved the crop yields of Nabataean farmers. Petra today, after the 8th
04:44century, when Petra was largely abandoned as a trading center, its stone structures were used
04:49for shelter by nomadic shepherds for several centuries. Then, in 1812, the unique ruins of
04:55Petra were discovered by Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt. He described the ruins of the
05:00once-great city in chronicles of his travels. With the Western world now aware of their existence,
05:05they soon attracted the interest of architects and scholars, among others. Starting in 1929,
05:11British archaeologists Agnes Conway and George Horsfield, as well as scholars Tophe Cannon and
05:17Ditleff Nielsen, launched a formal project to excavate and survey Petra. Numerous findings
05:23have been made in the decades since, including the 1993 discovery of Greek scrolls dating to
05:28the Byzantine period as well as the more recent documentation via satellite imaging of a previously
05:34unknown monumental structure buried beneath the sands of the area. In the early 2000s,
05:39the site was named one of the Seven New Wonders of the World, leading to a spike in tourism.
05:44Since then, efforts have been made to protect the ruins of Petra from heavy tourism,
05:48as well as damage from floods, rain, and other environmental factors.