petra : The lost city, one of the seven wonders

The International Day for Monuments and Sites also known as World Heritage Day is an international observance held on the 18th of  April each year around the world.

on this very day, I want to share one of the world Heritage sites which I toured two years back and it is named Petra, also known as the Lost City or the Rose City.

 In this pandemic situation traveling is merely a dream for all of us. After the end of the first wave by the time, we could have planned our next trip the second wave of covid hit us hard and now the only thing we have is to revive about all our previous trips memories and cherish them .

Petra is a historic and archaeological city in southern Jordan.

To be honest I am someone who doesn't have that much interest in exploring historical monuments and the fact that we would have to do a long walk to explore this place was making me feel terrible. 

But as we walk in the massive sandstone carved directly into vibrant red, white, pink, and sandstone cliff faces suddenly made me enticing, and the fact that this place, The "Lost City" still has secrets to reveal made me know more about this place.

As we started our journey our tour guide told us all the facts and fictions related to each part of this place.

So here I am gonna share some of these facts about Petra.

The prehistoric Jordanian city of Petra was "lost" to the Western world for hundreds of years.

In 1985, the Petra Archaeological Park was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site, and in 2007 it was named one of the new seven wonders of the world.

Not only this, several scenes from the Hollywood blockbuster Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade were filmed in Petra.

Jordan - the lost city of Petra, hidden in a valley surrounded by deserts and mountains is an entire city carved out of stone.

The lost city of Petra was rediscovered only 200 years ago because it was buried due to the effect of an earthquake.

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The valley is over 600 km long and offers 15 sites, and the sight shown in this picture is of Monastery, which is one of the largest and most beautiful structures in Petra.

Petra was once a thriving trading center and the capital of the Nabataean empire between 400 B.C. and A.D. 106.

At its peak, 2,000 years ago, Petra was home to as many as 30,000 people, full of temples, theaters, gardens, tombs, villas, Roman baths, and the camel caravans and marketplace bustle befitting the center of an ancient crossroads between east and west. 

After the Roman Empire annexed the city in the early second century A.D., it continued to thrive until an earthquake rattled it hard in A.D. 363. Then trade routes shifted, and by the middle of the seventh century what remained of Petra was largely deserted. 

Noone lived in it anymore except for a small tribe of Bedouins, who took up residence in some of the caves and, in more recent centuries, whiled away their spare time shooting bullets into the buildings in hopes of cracking open the vaults of gold rumored to be inside.

Petra should be definitely a bucket list of travel destinations for all travel enthusiasts over there .