Ruins🏛️ City & settlementAntiquity
Petra
Petra shows how a desert society combined international trade with advanced water management. The site also has lasting significance for local communities, including the Bdoul.
Photo: Azurfrog · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Facts
- Place
- Wadi Musa, Jordan
- Civilisation / patron
- Nabataeans
- Built
- c. 400 BCE – 100
- Status
- Ruins
- UNESCO World Heritage since
- 1985
- New Seven Wonders (2007)
- UNESCO World Heritage
History
The Nabataeans developed Petra into a trading city among rock faces and desert routes. Monumental tomb façades were carved into pink sandstone, while dams, channels and reservoirs supported the water supply. The city connected Arab traditions with Hellenistic and Roman architecture and later came under Roman rule. Shifting trade routes and earthquakes contributed to its decline, but rock-cut tombs and parts of the urban fabric remain.
More from: Antiquity
- Great Pyramid of Giza
- Hanging Gardens of Babylon
- Statue of Zeus at Olympia
- Temple of Artemis at Ephesus
- Mausoleum at Halicarnassus
- Colossus of Rhodes
- Lighthouse of Alexandria
- Stonehenge
- Göbekli Tepe
- Parthenon
- Persepolis
- Terracotta Army
- Colosseum
- Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa
- Teotihuacan
- Abu Simbel Temples
- Great Wall of China
- Nazca Lines
- Stelae of Aksum
- Sigiriya
Sources: Wikipedia — Petra