Petra wasn’t built so much as carved, its temples and tombs cut directly into rose-red sandstone cliffs by the Nabataeans, an Arab trading people who made the city their capital more than 2,000 years ago. Sitting at the crossroads of ancient trade routes linking Arabia, Egypt, and the Mediterranean, Petra grew wealthy on the incense and spice trade, its wealth reflected in facades far grander than the modest desert settlement around them might suggest.
To reach the city’s most famous building, visitors walk through the Siq, a narrow, kilometre-long gorge barely wide enough for two camels to pass, its walls rising up to 80 metres on either side. The passage opens, with almost theatrical suddenness, onto the Treasury, Al-Khazneh, Petra’s most photographed facade, carved directly from the cliff face and rising 40 metres into the desert light.
Lost for Centuries, Hiding in Plain Sight
Petra was effectively unknown to the Western world for centuries, protected less by secrecy than by its remote setting among the Bedouin who continued to live in and around it. It was reintroduced to European audiences only in 1812, by Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, who disguised himself as a Muslim traveller to gain access to a site local tribes had long kept largely to themselves.
Despite its fame, only a fraction of Petra has been excavated, archaeologists estimate that the vast majority of the city, including much of its residential areas, still lies buried beneath desert sand, waiting for future study.
Painting Rock That Glows
The way Petra’s sandstone shifts through pink, orange, and deep red depending on the light gives a watercolourist an extraordinary natural palette to work from. We’ve captured that rose-toned glow in our own Petra Jordan Watercolor Print, painted first by hand and printed to order on archival paper, a small piece of Jordan for a wall at home.
A capital city cut from stone rather than built upon it, Petra remains one of the few ancient wonders where the landscape itself is also the architecture.