The journey begins

Strabo the geographer, citing the philosopher Athenodorus, who visited Petra toward the beginning of the Christian era, described the metropolis of the Nabataeans as a great city with abundance of water, gardens, and some houses. Few decades ago David Roberts visited Petra and produced captive etchings and drawings. And T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) wrote:

“...so you will never know what Petra is like, unless you come out here. Only be assured that till you have seen it you have not had the glimmering of an idea how beautiful a place can be.”

In old days most tours were organized by drogmans, who were at once interpreters, guides, and factotums, and whose name has been anglicized as dragomans. Scholars, adventures, and simple tourists followed one another to Petra after that.

Nowadays guides handle the responsibility of explaining the history of the city and take the visitor in a glamorous trip never to be forgotten.

The sandstone that forms Petra's red-faced monuments is the oldest in a series of sandstone formations, underlain by pre-Cambrian granite with gneiss and schist. The oldest sandstone consists of coarse- to medium-grained quartz clasts, shot through with an iron- and manganese-rich matrix, and varies in color from red to yellow to chocolate.

Recently excavators found an immense pool complex near the Great Temple in 1998; in 2000, a Nabataean villa outside the Siq. In a stunning 2003 discovery, rock-cut tombs came to light beneath the Treasury, challenging old ideas about this iconic building. Now as in the past, Petra has the capacity to astonish.