The ancient Nabataens city of Petra is by far Jordan's best-known tourist attraction. It is in a spectacular setting reached by walking through a narrow desert gorge - a kilometre long, with walls which are 200 metres high - at the end of which towers the dramatic façade of theTreasury. Although the monument may be familiar from the film 'Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade' the sheer scale of the site cannot fail to impress. Lost to the world until the 1800s when it was rediscovered, it has quickly established itself as one of the most astonishing sites in the world.
The Nabataens were a hard-working Arab people who settled in Jordan around 63 BC and were renowned for their refined culture and monumental architecture. Petra was their capital city and a centre of trade. You could spend days exploring the site and still not discover all of its hundreds of buildings - temples, streets, tombs and baths, not to mention a 3000 seat open-air theatre.