Petra

THE ANCIENT CITY OF PETRA
Jordan is a country located at the crossroads between the orient and the european civilization. It is quite safe. In Jordan you can find many ruins of the distant past everywhere; for exaqmple the Girash, the Nabataen capital Petra, discovered in the early 19th century by a swiss explorer. Nowadays, this city is considered one of the new seven wonders of the world.

Petra: Lost city of mysteries
Petra's main income was the taxes that the Nabataeans charged to the merchants that were passing through their city in order to go to Damascus, This was how Petra became a fabulously wealthy city.The only way to Petra is through a two kilometer dry water course that the locals call Siq. The pathway is quite narrow and the cliff is more than a hundred meters high.The building in the image above was named by the arabs as El Kazhnah, which means the treasury. The Temple of El Deir is the largest building in Petra, its door is nine meters high. The Nabataeans believed fervently in the afterlife, that's why there are so many magnificent tombs. Petra slowly began to fade after the occupation of the Nabataeans. First came the roman invasion, followed by christianity and later on the establishment of the arabs. Trade routes no longer passed through Petra, and the city lost importance.

**ABOUT PETRA**
Petra is a symbol of Jordan and one of the seven wonders of the world. It is a singular city carved into the pure rock face by the Nabataeans, an industrious Arab people who established there more than 2000 years ago. These inhabitants built impressive rock-cut tombs honoring their kings and leaders. Also the trade of incense, spice and perfume with other countries like Egypt enabled Petra to grow and flourish as an important city. Moreover, Petra is known as the rose-red city because of the structures built by its people. These structues were covered with stucco and shinily painted, creating facades decorated by a backdrop of rose-colored cliffs. Other outstanding aspects which the city contains are constructions on steep cliffs, natural springs technology to hydrate their crops, exuberant, pools and reservoirs. The Nabataeans incorporated architectural elements from Alexandria but at the same time, being faithful to their own style. It was important for them to represent aspects of nature (for example: the integrated floral patterns and animal shapes to the columns) To organize the city the inhabitants worked in teams of stonemasons (artisans who carve the stone to build) supervised by an architect. They could start to carve at the rock’s top or bottom. When they couldn’t take advantage of existing cracks and clefts in the rock to help in carving process, they made a hole to insert a piece of wood. Adding water made the wood swell, which cracked the rock. Petra’s urbanization kept their natural contours (the main street followed the curve of the Wadi Musa, Petra's primary river) until the Roman occupation which imposed an urban grid with linear streets. After reading all this curious information, there is nothing left to say aside from our desire to see this ingenious work of architecture with our own eyes. There is no doubt that the Nabataean civilization was very advanced; this ancient people were able to take advantage of the most important natural resource that they had: rock, a durable material that is still used nowadays.

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