Petra

Petra is a symbol of Jordan and one of the seven wonders of the world. It’s a singular city carved into the pure rock face by the Nabataeans, an industrious Arab people who established there more than 2000 years ago. This 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 were covered with stucco and shinily painted, creating facades decorated for a backdrop of rose-colored cliffs.

Other outstanding aspects which the city content are constructions on steep cliffs, natural springs and 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: they 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 today. media type="file" key="podcast3.wma" width="271" height="66" align="center"

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