Petra Theatre

About this place

Petra's great theatre, also called the Nabataean Theatre, was carved into the sandstone mountainside in the 1st century AD, probably under King Aretas IV. Only the stage building and the ends of the seating were built of masonry; the rest is hewn from the rock. The curved auditorium, nearly 100 metres across, rises in three tiers of seats divided by two walkways, and held several thousand spectators. To make room for it, the builders sliced through an older row of tombs, whose chambers still gape as dark openings in the rock behind the top rows. The Romans refurbished it after annexing the Nabataean kingdom in 106 AD; its stage building later fell in an earthquake, probably that of 363, and the theatre was partly dismantled for building stone. The American archaeologist Philip Hammond excavated it in 1961–62. Statues once adorned the stage front; an almost complete Hercules was recovered nearby. Today the draw is the great sweep of rock-cut seats, with the tomb openings along the top and the partly rebuilt stage, lined with niches, at the foot. A fine view of the whole bowl opens from above, at the first viewpoint of the Al-Khubtha trail, which begins by the Royal Tombs. The main trail runs right past the theatre, about half a kilometre beyond the Treasury, at the end of the Street of Facades where the valley opens toward the city centre. The Royal Tombs are about 400 metres across the valley, and the Great Temple and Qasr al-Bint lie some 600 to 850 metres further on.