Walking the Siq

Petra was carved into rock more than two thousand years ago, and the thing nobody quite prepares you for is the approach. The Siq runs about a mile, a narrow corridor with rock walls going up on both sides, and it does all the work of making what waits at the end land properly.

As you get further in, the walls narrow and the light drops until it feels closer to a cave than a path. Then it opens, and the Treasury is directly in front of you, all at once, in full sun. It is a piece of theatre that the Nabateans engineered deliberately and it still works on every person who walks through it.

The Treasury deserves the attention it gets. Carved entirely out of the rock face, the detail on it holds up to as long as you want to give it. But Petra is a city rather than a facade, and the Royal Tombs and the Monastery are both worth the walk. The sandstone runs red and pink through the whole site, which is the quality that makes photographs of it look enhanced when they are not.

It survived largely intact partly because it was lost to the wider world for centuries and not rediscovered until the nineteenth century. That is a strange thing to stand inside. Other ancient cities were worn down by everyone who kept using them. This one was left alone.

Timing is the whole trick

Petra gets crowded, and it gets hot. Both problems have the same solution, which is to be there early or late rather than in the middle. Early morning through the Siq is a genuinely different experience from the same walk at eleven.

That argues for staying overnight nearby rather than coming in on a day trip, which is what most people do. Stay close and you get the site at both ends of the day, and you are not spending the good light in a vehicle.

Petra by Night runs the Siq by candlelight. It is a completely different reading of the same walk and worth doing as well as, not instead of, the daylight version.