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Rang

The rose-red city

Petra

Tombs and temples cut straight into cliffs of red, pink and banded sandstone in southern Jordan.

Al Deir, "The Monastery", a monument closely resembling Al Khazneh though less ornate. It can be accessed climbing a long flight of stairs carved in the mountain above Petra. A man can be seen at the top of the facade, s
Photo: Azurfrog, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Why Petra is rose-red sandstone

Petra was the capital of the Nabataeans, Arab traders who grew rich on the incense routes around two thousand years ago. They carved tombs, temples and a theatre directly into sandstone cliffs. The rock is coloured by iron and manganese: mostly red and pink, with swirling veins of yellow, white, purple and blue-grey. The entrance is a narrow gorge, the Siq, that opens suddenly on the carved front called the Treasury. The English cleric John William Burgon, who had not yet seen it, called Petra a rose-red city half as old as time in a poem of 1845, and the phrase stuck. The colour is warmest in early morning and late afternoon.

Rose-red sandstone#C0705ASandstone pink#E0A58CVein purple#7F4F6BVein yellow#D9B55ADesert cream#E9DCC0

Values are fair approximations of what the eye sees there, not measurements.

Colours tied to Petra

RoseA bright colour halfway between red and magenta on the colour wheel
About this page

Written by the Rang desk with AI assistance. Background: "Petra" on Wikipedia. If you know Petra and we have it wrong, tell us.

More colour cities

All colour cities
🇮🇳 The open-air gallery of RajasthanShekhawatiMerchant mansions in the towns of north Rajasthan are covered inside and out with painted murals.🇮🇳 Land of mirror work and white desertKutchEmbroidery, tie-dye and block print in deep red and indigo, set against the white salt of the Rann.🇮🇳 The silk cityKanchipuramA temple town in Tamil Nadu whose heavy silk saris pair strong body colours with contrasting gold borders.🇮🇳 Red earth and a golden sphereAurovilleAn experimental township on red earth near Pondicherry, centred on the golden globe of the Matrimandir.🇮🇳 Akbar's red sandstone cityFatehpur SikriA Mughal capital built in one red stone in the 1570s and left by the court only a few years later.🇮🇳 Capital in red sandstoneDelhiFrom the Qutb Minar to the Red Fort to the government buildings, Delhi's monuments share one red stone.

Photo credits on this page

The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.

The weekly palette

Every Monday: seven colours you may not know, what the world is wearing this week, and one idea about colour.