Notes on Urban Planning, Landscape and Architecture of Nabataean Petra Paradigm

Abstract

Hellenism was a real cultural force in Nabataean Petra's urban planning and architectural products. Petra is a paradigm of our knowledge of how the Nabataeans designed and built their urban settlement. In approaching the city, one immediately notices how they planned the city to maximise and take advantage of the accessible majestic landscape topography. They created an extraordinary metropolis in the city centre and the surrounding sandstone mountains. There are many aspects of the particularity and creativity of Nabataean culture during the Hellenistic and Roman periods. In the Nabataean Petra paradigm, we can observe the following: cultural interaction, cultural interchange, cultural exchange, cultural adaptation, and cultural sharing, which acted as cultural links between the peoples of the east and west. Thus, creating a new expression and direction of the cultural sharing between the East and West. Metropolitan cities, as in the case of the Nabataean Petra, are focal points where these changes and their effects are experienced significantly.This paper attempts to shed light on the functional, structural, typological, and morphological conceptions and aspects of the urban development and architecture of Nabataean Petra, particularly in the public spaces of the city centre and the surrounding tomb architecture. It argues that this development and formation was the expression of the highly developed self-image of the citizens of Petra reflected in its urban planning, landscape, architecture, and cultural significance.

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“…Moreover, it is in a cultural landscape setting where many archaeological and rock-cut historical monuments are well preserved. In approaching the city centre, one immediately observes how the Nabataeans planned their city to maximise and take advantage of the accessible majestic topography of the landscape, thus, discovering the "enigmatical harmony between man, nature, and the divine rather than one of an "organic design" (Haddad, 2022), Figure 1. 2015) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989).…”