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Little Petra (, al-batrā aṣ-ṣaġïra), also known as Siq al-Barid (, literally "the cold canyon"), is an archaeological site located north of Petra and the town of Wadi Musa in the Ma'an Governorate of Jordan. Like Petra, it is a Nabataeans site, with buildings carved into the walls of the sandstone canyons. As its name suggests, it is much smaller, consisting of three wider open areas connected by a canyon. It is part of the Petra Archeological Park, though accessed separately, and included in Petra's inscription as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is often visited by tourists in conjunction with Petra itself, since it is free and usually less crowded.
Like Petra, it was probably built during the height of Nabataean influence during the 1st century C.E. While the purpose of some of the buildings is not clear, archaeology believe that the whole complex was a suburb of Petra, the Nabatean capital, meant to house visiting traders on the Silk Road. After the decline of the Nabataeans, it fell vacant, used only by Bedouin nomads, for centuries. Along with neighboring Beidha, Little Petra was excavated in the later 20th century by Diana Kirkbride and Brian Byrd.
In 2010, a biclinium, or dining room, in one of the caves was discovered to have surviving interior art depicting grapes, vines and putto in great detail with a varied color scheme, probably in homage to the Greek god Dionysus and the consumption of wine. The 2,000-year-old ceiling in the Hellenistic art style have since been art restoration. While they are not only the only known example of interior Nabataean art figurative art in situ, they are a very rare large-scale example of Hellenistic painting, considered superior even to similar later Roman paintings at Herculaneum.
It is on the local road that leaves Wadi Musa and follows the edge of the mountains around Petra itself through the small Bedouin village of Umm Sayhoun. About north of Wadi Musa, a short road to the west leads to the narrow, unpaved parking lot for Little Petra and Beidha, a Neolithic site nearby. There is another small Bedouin settlement 1 km (0.6 mi) to the east. From the parking lot, Siq al-Barid opens up in the rock facade to the west southwest. Its name, literally "cold canyon", comes from its orientation and its high walls preventing the entry of most available sunlight. The modern name "Little Petra" comes from its similarities to the larger site to the south—both must be entered via a narrow canyon, and consist primarily of Nabataean buildings.
The canyon widens after . In this open area many of the sandstone walls have had openings carved into them; they were used as dwellings. On the south face is a triclinium with a projecting portico that archaeologists believe was used as a temple, though they know very little about it.
The canyon then narrows again for another 50 m (150 ft), leading to another, smaller open area. The carved openings are even more numerous here, including four large triclinia. Archaeologists believe these spaces could have been used to entertain visiting merchants.
On the south side is a small biclinium. It has some rare surviving Nabataean art on its rear wall, and so it is called the Painted Room. Opposite the room on the north is a large cistern, part of the water system built by the original inhabitants.
At the west end of the canyon a set of steps leads to the top of the rock. There are panoramic views available of the entire Petra region. A lightly-used foot trail leads from there to Ad-Deir at Petra, to the southwest.
For the remainder of the millennium, and much of the next, Little Petra remained unknown to all but the Bedouin nomads who sometimes camped in it or its vicinity. Europeans, who could not visit the Arab world under Islamic rule, heard about Petra but were unsure of its existence. (2025). 9781461414810, Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN 9781461414810 When Swiss traveler Jacob Burckhardt became the first nonlocal visitor to Petra since Roman times in 1812, he did not venture to its north, or did not write about it. Later global visitors to the region likewise seem to have concentrated on the main Petra site. Only in the late 1950s did British archaeologist Diana Kirkbride supplement her excavations at Petra itself with digs in the Beidha area, which included Little Petra, not described as a separate site at the time. Those digs continued until 1983,Comer, Environmental History, 105 two years before UNESCO inscribed the Petra area, including Beidha and Little Petra, as a World Heritage Site.
Following that designation, tourism to Petra increased, and spiked upwards again following the 1989 release of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which climaxed with the main characters riding down Petra's Siq to Al-Khazneh, where they found the Holy Grail.Comer, Environmental History, 5 To assure that this growth benefited the region and did not degrade its archaeological resources, the Petra Regional Authority was created to manage all the resources within a area. Beidha and Little Petra, among other satellite sites, were included in the Petra Archaeological Park. The village of Umm Sayhoun was built between Wadi Musa and the two sites to house the Bedouin.
The inner room has painted decoration in a completely different style than the larger outer room. Instead of architectural embellishment, the walls and vaulted ceiling of this room exhibit a complex program of intertwining vines, flowers, figures, several varieties of local birds, and insects. Several erotes—small winged gods associated with love and occasionally the cultivation of wine—are seen participating in viticulture management, using ladders and pruning hooks, carrying baskets of gathered grapes, and defending the vines from scavenging birds. The erotes are armed with bows, arrows, and spears. In addition to the domesticated and harvested grape vines, wild raspberry vines and field bindweed flowers wrap throughout the scene to pay homage to the local flora of Petra's northern hinterland. Twaissi et al. (2010) were able to identify an additional Anthropomorphism figure in the scene in addition to the erotes, who they interpret as a representation of the Romanized Egyptian goddess. However, the overall iconographic scene and architectural parallels elsewhere in the area of Petra lend weight to the attribution of the space as a center of Dionysiac worship.
In addition to the figural and floral painting within the inner room of the Painted Biclinium, the room appears to have been further embellished with an intricate program of stuccoed decoration. Remnants of an entablature are preserved on the east and west walls of the room, and the center of the vault once held a stucco medallion.
Many visitors to Petra have increasingly been including Little Petra on their itineraries. Guidebooks recommend it as less crowded and more relaxed than Petra itself. The Painted House, which has no counterpart at Petra, has also added to the attraction.
It is also possible to hike via the trail from the end of the canyon to Ad-Deyr at Petra. Those who make the journey are advised to do so with a guide as the trail, while obvious in many places, is not formally trail blazing. Hikers are also cautioned against attempting the trail alone, or late in the day, as nights in the region are often cold. It is also forbidden to enter Petra without having paid the larger site's admission.
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