Three days in Petra: the Treasury is the least of it
Two nights in Wadi Musa, the gorge and the famous facade on the first afternoon, a full day for the tombs and the long climb to the Monastery, and the high place at dawn before you drive on.
- Length
- 3 days, 2 nights
- Where you stay
- Petra
- Places
- 7 across 3 days
Nearly everyone who comes to Petra sees the same forty minutes of it: the walk through the gorge, the facade at the end, the photograph, and back to the coach. That is the smallest part of a site that covers sixty square kilometres and holds something like eight hundred carved tombs.
Petra was the capital of the Nabataeans, an Arab trading people who grew rich taxing the incense and spice caravans that crossed this desert, and who cut their monuments into rose and grey sandstone rather than building them up from the ground. Rome absorbed the kingdom in AD 106, earthquakes broke the water system, and by the Middle Ages the place had been left to the Bedouin and forgotten in Europe until a Swiss traveller talked his way in during 1812.
Two nights in the town above the gate gets you the cheap second day on the ticket, and lets you walk in at six in the morning when the light is on the rock and the tour groups are still at breakfast. It is also, hour for hour, the hardest walking of any trip in this region: expect fifteen kilometres and several hundred cut steps a day.
Highlights
- The last bend of the Siq, where the gorge narrows to a couple of metres and the Treasury appears through the gap
- The Monastery at four in the afternoon, when the sun comes round onto a facade fifty metres high with almost nobody in front of it
- The Royal Tombs from the terrace opposite, four enormous facades in a row, banded pink and grey like cut agate
- The high place above the city at dawn, reached by a rock staircase the Nabataeans cut two thousand years ago
Where to stay
Petra, two nights
Two nights, one hotel in Wadi Musa, and a two day ticket. Day one takes the main corridor as far as the Treasury, day two takes the whole valley and the staircase up to the Monastery, and the last morning is for the sanctuary on the mountain above.
Nothing here needs booking except the evening candle event, and that only three days a week.
Day by day
Day 1 in Petra
Through the gorge to the Treasury
Arrive at lunchtime, check in, and walk down to the gate for the middle of the afternoon. The site is two kilometres deep before the first famous thing, and doing that stretch on the first day means the second morning can start beyond it.
The walk from the gate crosses open ground with freestanding block tombs and the mouths of aqueducts, then drops into the Siq, the crack in the mountain that hid the city for a thousand years.
Afternoon light in the gorge is dim and the Treasury is best photographed between nine and eleven in the morning, so treat today as reconnaissance and come back tomorrow with the sun on it.
- 14:00
Siq
OtherA natural fault in the sandstone, a kilometre and a bit long, three metres wide in places and up to a hundred and fifty metres deep. The Nabataeans paved it, ran a water channel down both sides and carved niches and camel caravans into the walls at intervals, which is worth knowing before you spend the whole walk looking straight ahead.
- 15:00
Treasury
HistoricForty metres of columns, urns and figures cut back into the cliff at the end of the gorge, almost certainly the tomb of a Nabataean king rather than any kind of treasury. The urn on top is pocked with bullet holes from generations who believed a pharaoh's gold was sealed inside it. The interior is a bare room, which is the case for nearly every facade here.
- 16:00
Street of Facades
VisitPast the Treasury the gorge opens into a wide canyon with rows of tomb fronts cut along both walls, dozens of them, most stepped and plain in the older Nabataean style. This is the first hint of how big the place actually is, and it is where most day visitors turn round.
- 18:00
Back up to Wadi Musa for dinner
EatThe walk out is uphill all the way and takes an hour at a fair pace. Most hotels run a minibus from the gate; ask before you leave in the morning rather than at six in the evening.
With more time: Three evenings a week the Siq and the Treasury are lit with a couple of thousand candles for a couple of hours after dark, with music and mint tea in front of the facade. Tickets are sold separately at the visitor centre and it is quite unlike the daytime walk, though you will be sharing it with several hundred other people. Check which nights before you plan around it.
Day 2 in Petra
The tombs, the colonnaded street, and eight hundred steps to the Monastery
Be at the gate at six. The first hour is the best of the trip: the Siq empty, the Treasury lit, and the long walk down the valley with nobody in front of you.
Past the theatre the canyon widens into the city proper, where a colonnaded Roman street runs between the remains of temples and markets, and the great tomb facades stand along the eastern cliff above it. This is the part that turns Petra from a monument into a place where thirty thousand people lived.
Save the Monastery for the middle of the afternoon. It faces west, the light comes round onto it after three, and the eight hundred rock cut steps up the wadi are much less punishing once the sun is off the staircase. Allow an hour up and forty minutes down.
- 07:30
Royal Tombs
VisitFour huge facades in a row along the eastern cliff, reached by a staircase from the valley floor. The largest was converted into a church in 446, and the one next to it is banded with red, grey and cream sandstone in swirls that look like polished stone rather than a mountain. The terrace in front of them is the best view over the whole city.
- 10:00
The Great Temple
VisitA vast excavated complex beside the colonnaded street with a colonnaded forecourt and a small theatre in the middle of it, probably a civic building rather than a temple at all. It gives you the ground plan of the city centre, which is otherwise hard to read from the piles of stone around it.
- 13:00
Lunch at the far end of the valley
EatThere is a restaurant by the museum at the bottom of the Monastery trail, and stalls selling flatbread and tea most of the way up it. Eat before the climb, not after.
- 14:30
Monastery
HistoricBigger than the Treasury and far less visited: fifty metres wide and nearly as high, carved in the first century AD and reached by a staircase of about eight hundred steps up a side valley. The doorway alone is taller than a house. There is a tea shop on the rock opposite where everybody sits and looks at it, and by four in the afternoon there may be a dozen of you.
With more time: Ten minutes beyond the Monastery the path ends on a cliff edge looking west across the whole rift valley to the hills of the Negev, with a Bedouin tea camp on the rim. Back down in the city, the Byzantine church halfway up the northern slope keeps two large sixth century mosaic floors under a shelter, and it is a five minute detour on the way home.
Day 3 in Petra
The high place at dawn, and out
One more early start, and a different Petra. A staircase cut into the mountain south of the theatre climbs to a sanctuary on a flat summit, with altars, a basin and a channel carved out of the living rock and the whole valley several hundred metres below.
It takes about forty minutes of steady climbing from the valley floor. Go up at first light, have the top to yourself, and be back at the gate by ten with time to collect the bags.
Petra to Wadi Rum is under two hours by road, to Aqaba a little over two, and to Amman about three on the desert highway.
- 06:30
High Place of Sacrifice
HistoricThe best viewpoint in Petra and the one that costs you something. Nabataean masons cut the whole route as a processional staircase, and at the top there is a rectangular court, two obelisks left standing where the mountain around them was quarried away, and a drainage channel from an altar. Come down the far side by the Wadi Farasa route if your legs are up to it: it passes a lion carved into the rock face and a garden temple, and it is a far better walk than the way you came.
- 11:00
Drive on south or north
TravelTaxis and minibuses leave from Wadi Musa for Wadi Rum, Aqaba and Amman, and a hired car and driver for the day is not much more than two seats on a bus. Book it the night before.
With more time: If the climb does not appeal, spend the morning at Little Petra instead, a short taxi ride north: a miniature version of the same thing in a narrow gorge, free to enter, with a painted Hellenistic ceiling in one of the dining rooms and hardly anybody in it.
Before you go
Tickets and the Jordan Pass
Petra is one of the most expensive archaeological sites in the world. A one day ticket costs 50 JD, two days 55 JD and three days 60 JD, which makes the second day almost free and is the strongest argument for sleeping here rather than day tripping.
Anyone who arrives in Jordan and leaves again the same day, which usually means a crossing from Israel, pays 90 JD instead. Bring your passport: the ticket office checks the date you entered the country, and a hotel key is accepted as proof if you arrived the day before.
The Jordan Pass, bought online before you fly, covers the entry fee and waives the visa charge for stays of three nights or more. If Petra is on your trip, buy it before you land.
Where to stay and what it costs
Wadi Musa is the town on the ridge above the gate, and it exists for Petra. Hotels run from hostels to five star places on the upper road, and the difference that matters is not the stars but how far above the entrance you are: the walk down takes fifteen minutes and the walk back up is a hill at the end of a long day. Most hotels shuttle guests down for free.
Eating is hotel buffets, a handful of restaurants on the main street and shawarma stands. Standards are fair rather than exciting and prices are higher than the rest of Jordan.
Little Petra, fifteen minutes north by taxi, is free, quiet and has a scattering of desert camps around it, which is an alternative to the town if you want to sleep under canvas.
Walking, heat and animals
The site opens at six and closes at five in winter, six in summer. Walking in at opening is the single best decision available to you, for the light, the temperature and the quiet.
Take two litres of water each, a hat, sun cream and proper shoes. There are drink stalls throughout the site but they are expensive, and there is no shade on either of the mountain climbs.
Horses, donkeys, camels and carts are all offered constantly, and the animals are often in poor condition and roughly handled. Walking is the kind thing and usually the quicker one. Prices for anything on offer inside the site are negotiable and the first number is never the real one.
The photograph everybody has seen is genuinely worth the journey, and it is the first ten minutes of a very large city. What stays with people afterwards is usually something else: the tea shop opposite the Monastery, the walk down the Wadi Farasa with nobody else on it, the moment the valley opens out past the theatre.
Two nights and a two day ticket is what makes that possible, and it costs about five pounds more than the version everybody else does.
Or make it a longer trip
These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.
- 9 days · 5 cities · via PetraNine days in Jordan: one road south, and everything on it
- 9 days · 3 cities · via PetraNine days in Israel and Jordan: cross the river and everything changes
- 21 days · 8 cities · via PetraTwenty-one days from Cairo to Jerusalem: three countries strung along one very old road
Make it your trip
Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.
Common questions
- Is one day at Petra enough?
- One day gets you the Siq, the Treasury, the main valley and, at a push, the Monastery, and you will finish it exhausted having seen the headlines. The two day ticket costs about ten per cent more than the one day ticket, which makes the second day the best value in Jordan. Three days is for people who want the outlying tombs and the long walks.
- How hard is the walking?
- Harder than most people expect. The main route is eight kilometres there and back on sand and stone before you climb anything, the Monastery adds about eight hundred cut steps and the high place several hundred more. It is all doable at a slow pace with water and an early start, and the steps are uneven rather than exposed.
- Can I visit Petra as a day trip from Israel or Aqaba?
- You can, and the ticket price triples to 90 JD if you leave Jordan the same day. From Aqaba it is a little over two hours each way, which leaves a short day on site. Sleeping in Wadi Musa costs less than the ticket difference and gets you the early morning, which is the whole point.
- When is the best time of year?
- March to May and September to November. Summer regularly passes forty degrees in a place with no shade, and winter is cold, with occasional flash floods that close the Siq for a day. The site opens at six all year, and mornings are the answer in every season.
- Can I change the days around?
- Copy it into the planner and rearrange, though the shape holds for most people: the far end of the valley on the full day, the climbs at either end of the day, and nothing at all in the middle of the afternoon in summer.