Which country contains the ancient city of Petra?

Petra is an ancient city in Jordan.

The archaeological site lies in southern Jordan, in a basin surrounded by sandstone mountains. The Nabataeans, an Arab people, settled Petra by the 4th century BCE and later made it the capital of their kingdom. Its position along incense and caravan routes helped it become a major trading centre.

Petra is famous for structures carved directly into rose-coloured sandstone, including Al-Khazneh, commonly called the Treasury. The city also had sophisticated dams, cisterns and channels that captured and distributed scarce water. That engineering helped sustain a large population in an otherwise dry environment.

A common mistake is to call Petra a purely “lost city.” It declined after Roman annexation in 106 CE, changing trade routes and a major earthquake in 363, but local communities continued to know the site. Swiss traveller Johann Ludwig Burckhardt brought it to wider Western attention in 1812. Petra became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985.