Petra

Petra lies between the Red Sea and the Dead Sea and has been inhabited since prehistoric times. The city is half-built and half-carved into the rock, and it is surrounded by mountains riddled with passages and gorges.

The World Heritage property covers 26,171 hectares in the Ma'an Governorate of Jordan, and its boundaries coincide with those of the Petra National Park.

The main way in from the east is the Siq, a natural winding rocky cleft that leads to what was once an extensive trading city.

The monuments named in the World Heritage listing include the Khasneh (the Treasury), the Urn Tomb, the Palace Tomb, the Corinthian Tomb and the Deir, which means monastery.

These facades join Hellenistic architecture to older Nabataean rock-cut tomb and temple traditions, and date to the first centuries BC to AD.

The Nabataeans were Arabian nomads from the Negev Desert who first built their wealth as traders on the Incense Routes, which ran from southern Arabia towards the port of Gaza.

Petra became a major caravan centre in Hellenistic and Roman times, handling the incense of Arabia, the silks of China and the spices of India.

From Petra the Nabataeans could watch the Incense Routes and tax the caravans that crossed their territory, while the site's inaccessibility gave it protection.

The name Petra comes from the Greek word for rock. It was the Greek name for the Nabataean capital that is thought to have been called Raqmu.

A wealthy community was living near Petra by 312 BCE, when a Greek expedition attacked it and failed.

An ingenious water management system let people settle an essentially arid area during the Nabataean, Roman and Byzantine periods.

The system combined diversion dams, tunnels and channels with a large network of cisterns and reservoirs that captured and conserved seasonal rains.

The area is subject to flash floods, and the Nabataeans used dams, cisterns and aqueducts to create what amounted to an artificial oasis.

The listing names the Muthlim tunnel, water channels, aqueducts, reservoirs and cisterns as water engineering from the first centuries BC to AD.

Scholars usually date the Nabataean kingdom from 168 BCE, the date of its first known king, Aretas I, to 106 CE, when the Roman Empire annexed it under Trajan.

The Nabataean civilisation at the site is dated from the fourth century BC to the first century AD, and later Roman and Byzantine remains include a colonnaded street, a theatre and a church.

Earthquakes around 363 CE and 551 CE brought widespread destruction to the Nabataean cities, and by the Arab invasion of the 7th century CE they had long been deserted.

European explorers began visiting the area in the 19th century, when the Nabataean cities were rediscovered.

Petra was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1985.