Hi Matthew,

Am I right in thinking you wrote the Rough Guide to Jordan? If so, I wonder if you have any up to date information on a proposed visitors' centre complete with turnstiles etc(!)to be built at Petra, early in 2006?

I read something about this in one of the Travel sections of the Sunday supplements a while ago and was wondering if it was better to visit Petra now - before this 'thing' is built, or if the idea is just a proposed one and it may be several more months or even years before they turn Petra into the sort of tourist nightmare and rip off joint some parts ot The Great Wall are. (Went to China recently and shuddered with horror at turnstiles at Badaling and public loos half way up the wall!)

hi Beverley - Yes, that's me. I wrote the Rough Guide to Jordan. I've given a (sort of) answer to your question on the Middle East branch - but, in short, I don't think it will be as bad as you think. Chiefly because Petra is so big that any kind of Visitor Centre at the gate has no impact at all on the rest of the site, which is a mile (or more) away on the other side of the mountains. (There's a lot of walking to be done when you visit Petra!) I've heard, anyway, that this new Visitor Centre will be designed sympathetically, with reasonable attention paid to blending in with the surroundings. The existing Visitor Centre is not bad - made of local stone, reasonably attractive and tucked away beside the gate, so any replacement I doubt will be very much worse.

So yes - go to Petra! Whenever you like - now or later, this new Visitor Centre won't make any difference. Once you've bought your ticket and started the walk in, you leave civilization behind anyway. The whole area of Petra is a protected, no-build zone - and that won't change, whatever else happens outside the site, by the gate.