Petra, Jordan

The walk into Petra runs through the Siq, a narrow sandstone canyon just over three-quarters of a mile long, before opening onto the Treasury's carved facade — the approach itself is part of what makes the first view work, so we tell families not to rush it. Petra is a full ancient city, not a single monument, and easily fills a full day for anyone visiting the Monastery or the higher viewpoints beyond the Treasury.

Royal Jordanian is currently the only airline flying nonstop between the US and Amman, with service from New York, Washington D.C., Chicago, Detroit, and Dallas-Fort Worth — a genuinely wide nonstop network for a Middle East destination. Petra itself is a three-hour drive south of Amman.

Petra sits in a desert basin, and midday heat between June and August gets genuinely extreme for the walk in and around the site. March through May and September through November both bring far more comfortable temperatures for the amount of walking involved.

The walk through the narrow Siq canyon to Petra's Treasury facade is one of travel's most reliably dramatic reveals, and the site extends well beyond that single famous view into a full ancient city carved into rose-colored rock. Most visitors base in the nearby town of Wadi Musa and pair Petra with Jordan's Wadi Rum desert, a short drive south, for a combined few days covering two of the country's signature landscapes.

Two to three nights covers the site itself thoroughly, typically combined with Jordan's Wadi Rum desert for a longer regional trip. It suits history and adventure travelers alike, and a second day at Petra (with a discounted return ticket) allows exploring beyond the Treasury that most day-trippers miss.

Getting there: About 11-13h nonstop to Amman (Royal Jordanian, from New York, Washington D.C., Chicago, Detroit, or Dallas-Fort Worth), then a 3h drive south to Petra. Voldeluxe compares routing and cabin options for Petra, Jordan rather than booking the first itinerary a search engine surfaces, and times the trip against March to May, or September to November rather than whatever dates happen to be cheapest.

Petra was carved directly into rose-colored sandstone cliffs by the Nabataeans, an Arab trading people who controlled the region's lucrative incense and spice caravan routes starting around the 4th century BC, and the city's wealth and engineering sophistication — including an advanced water-channel and cistern system that let a desert city support tens of thousands of residents — came directly from that trade monopoly. The Treasury (Al-Khazneh), Petra's most photographed facade, is reached through the Siq, a narrow, roughly 1.2-kilometer natural canyon with walls up to 80 meters high in places, a dramatic approach that was also a deliberate defensive chokepoint for the ancient city. Despite its scale, Petra was essentially unknown to the Western world until Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, disguised as a Muslim traveler, was led there by a local guide in 1812 — local Bedouin communities had never lost knowledge of the site, another case where 'rediscovery' really means introduction to European audiences. The Treasury and other major facades are largely facades only — most rooms carved behind them are relatively plain, since their purpose was tombs and ceremonial space rather than elaborate interior living quarters. Petra's surrounding region is still home to Bedouin communities, some historically living within the site itself before a 1985 UNESCO-linked resettlement, and Bedouin tea and hospitality remain a genuine part of visiting today.