Jordan Guide
Petra and around
The Siq
From the crowded, horse-smelly bridge, the path drops sharply down over the lip of the dam into Petra's most dramatic and awe-inspiring natural feature – the Siq gorge, principal entrance into the city, yet invisible until you're almost upon it. Overhead, the path was originally framed by an ornamental arch, which collapsed in 1896 although its abutments survive, decorated by the smoothed-out remnants of niches flanked by pilasters. All the way along the left-hand wall is a Nabatean rock-cut water channel, and on the right-hand wall further along are the remains of terracotta pipes for water, both probably dating from the same time as the reorganization of the city water supply that prompted the building of the dam. At various points, you'll come across worn patches of the Roman/Nabatean road which originally paved the Siq along its entire length, in between stretches of newly consolidated pathway.
The path along the wadi bed twists and turns between high, bizarrely eroded sandstone cliffs for 1200m, sometimes widening to form broad, sunlit open spaces in the echoing heart of the mountain, dotted with a tree or two and cut through by the cries of birds; in other places, the looming 150-metre-high walls close in to little more than a couple of metres apart, blocking out sound, warmth and even daylight. All the way down, high, narrow wadis feed in from either side, most of them blocked by modern dams (often set back to show the remains of the original Nabatean dams) to limit both flood danger and unauthorized exploration: once you're in the Siq, the only way is onward or backward.
When you think the gorge can't possibly go on any longer, there comes a dark, narrow defile, framing at its end a strip of extraordinary classical architecture. With your eye softened to the natural flows of eroded rock in the Siq, the clean lines of columns and pediments come as a revelation. As you step out into the daylight, there is no more dramatic or breathtaking vision in the whole of Jordan than the facade of the Treasury.