The Treasury, Petra · Travel Poster

Not just a view, the heritage behind it. Ella writes about the place, its hidden history, and the details that never make it into the guidebooks, all printed on the poster.

It isn't a treasury at all, it's a tomb, carved by the Nabataeans over two thousand years ago. The name comes from a local legend that an Egyptian pharaoh, fleeing Moses, hid his gold inside the stone urn carved at the very top of the facade. For generations, people took the story seriously enough to shoot at the urn with rifles, hoping to crack it open. You can still see the bullet marks today. There was never any gold in there, only solid sandstone, the same stone as everything else. The whole city was lost to the Western world for hundreds of years too, rediscovered in 1812 by a Swiss traveller who talked his way in by pretending to be a pilgrim looking for a different tomb entirely.

An original illustration, available in colour or black and white, created for the Ella's Adventures travel poster series.

No frame included.