Wu'ayra Castle

A Crusader castle on a rock-cut promontory above Wadi Musa, perched at the edge of a sheer drop and reached by a stone bridge over a narrow ravine. Built by King Baldwin I as part of his lordship of Transjordan, it commanded the trade route from Damascus to the Red Sea and the approach to Petra.

What remains is partly ruined — a few walls, a chapel apse, traces of the curtain — but the setting is the thing. From the keep you look straight down into a slot canyon and across at the back of the Petra ridge. Free to visit, signposted from the road below the Mövenpick hotel; about a 20-minute walk in.

things to do sight archaeology
A story
The Crusaders called it Li Vaux Moise — the Valley of Moses. Built in 1116, it was the southernmost outpost of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem and held out for less than seventy years before Saladin's forces took it.