No arrival in travel beats Petra’s: a kilometre through the Siq, a candle-thin canyon of swirling rose stone, until the walls part and the Treasury’s carved columns blaze in front of you. The Nabataeans cut an entire city into these cliffs two thousand years ago, and it still stuns on sight.
The essential route
- Enter at opening time and walk the Siq in early light.
- Meet the Treasury before the crowds, then continue past the Street of Facades and the theatre.
- Climb the 850 steps to the Monastery, Petra’s biggest facade, in the afternoon.
- Finish with sunset from the High Place of Sacrifice.
Worth knowing
- The Jordan Pass bundles visas and Petra tickets, cheaper for almost every visitor
- Two days beat one: the site is vast and the light changes everything
- Petra by Night, candles filling the Siq and Treasury plaza, runs three evenings a week
- Wear real shoes: the trails are stone, sand and stairs
The view most people miss
The famous Treasury-from-above photograph comes from the Al-Khubtha trail: a signed staircase route past the Royal Tombs that ends on a ledge looking straight down into the plaza. It adds ninety minutes and repays them tenfold, both for the view and for the quiet at the top.
Pairing the trip
Petra sits perfectly between Wadi Rum’s Mars-red desert, an hour south, sleep in a camp under the stars, and the Dead Sea’s float-and-do-nothing shores to the north. A week covers all three, which is why Jordan punches so far above its size for travellers. Spring and autumn bring the kind weather.
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