It’s as old as dirt. Well, it is dirt primarily. You may know it from “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”, but this is no movie set. It is one of the “New Seven Wonders of the World.”
The “rose city” of Petra, Jordan is a vast, unique city of grand temples, tombs, and buildings carved into the sandstone rock face by the Nabataeans, an industrious Arab people who settled here more than 2000 years ago, turning it into an important junction for the silk, spice and other trade routes that linked China, India and southern Arabia with Egypt, Syria, Greece and Rome.
Incredibly, this ancient site remained unknown to the Western world until 1812 when it was discovered by a Swiss explorer. And, get this: this year, Petra will hold its very first Marathon right through the ancient city and into the mountains around it.