‘Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade’ did for Petra what ‘The Sound of Music’ did for Salzburg, but with less nuns. The image of Harrison Ford galloping through the narrow canyon to arrive at the Treasury Building is an iconic one. Petra is one of those occasions when a movie set exists in real life. The gorge, properly called ‘The Siq’, is over a kilometre in length and, at times, is only three metres wide. It feels like a secret passage to hidden kingdom; because that’s what it is. At its end, quite by surprise, you emerge into an open space and the Treasury Building towers majestically above you. A wonderful, natural phenomenon gives way to a stunning human masterpiece. The design was intended to impress a traveller entering the city; it still does. For years,
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