Little Petra and the First Farmers

Siq al-Barid sits nine kilometres north of the main gate and costs nothing to enter, which is why we can run this for twenty dinars. It was a working suburb of ancient Petra, the place caravans unloaded before the last leg, and it takes about twenty-five minutes to walk end to end. The reason to come is the painted biclinium above the third staircase: Hellenistic frescoes of vines, birds and putti, the only surviving Nabataean interior painting anywhere. It is behind a grille and the ladder up is steep, narrow and mildly undignified. Then we walk ten minutes to Beidha, a Neolithic village from around 7000 BC. Round stone houses first, rectangular ones later, and in between the moment people stopped moving and started farming. Be warned: there is almost nothing to look at. It is a knee-high stone plan in the dirt, and it is also one of the most important sites in the Middle East, and we will spend half an hour there explaining why. If you want spectacle, book the dawn Treasury walk instead. This one is for people who like being told what they are looking at.