Petra is one of the new seven wonders of the world. Petra is often called the "Rose-Red City", but this hardly does justice to the extraordinary range of colours that blend as the sun makes its daily passage over the site. It is a vast, unique city, carved into the sheer rock face by the Nabataeans, an industrious Arab people settled down here more than 2000 years ago, turning it into an important junction for the silk, spice and other trade routes that linked China, India, Egypt, Syria, Greece and Rome.