A little of history:
'Pink City', 'Lost City', 'City of Moses'. Petra goes by various names, all suited to its more than 2,000 years of history since founding by the Nabataeans, a Bedouin people who ruled part of Jordan. It comes from the red rocks of the desert of that country the nickname of 'pink city', since its buildings were excavated in the rocks of this coloration. Bastion of caravans coming or going to the East, the place even housed 30,000 people at its peak.
One of them was Moses, the biblical character who spent part of his life in Jordan and where he also died. Because of it, the modern city where today the archaeological site of Petra is located is called Wadi Musa, or Valley of Moses. But this part of the world was always a disputed territory and Petra passed from the hands of the Nabataeans to those of the Roman Empire, which later became Byzantine, and was still a refuge for the Crusader Knights.
There are ruins of all these periods scattered by its 264 km ². With the arrival of the Arabs and the territorial changes that this entailed, Petra's position lost importance and the city declined, being completely abandoned after a strong earthquake partially destroyed it in the year 363. No one has heard of the place for hundreds of years , which gave it the name of 'lost city'. Until, in 1812, it was rediscovered by a Swiss archaeologist.
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