The filming story

For the climax of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Steven Spielberg needed a façade that would plausibly hide an entire temple interior. Al-Khazneh — the Treasury of Petra, carved directly into the cliff face by the Nabataean people around 100 BC — became the entrance to the fictional Canyon of the Crescent Moon, behind which the Holy Grail waited. The 40-metre-high columned façade appears as Indiana Jones and his father (Sean Connery) approach on horseback through the Siq.

The 1.2-kilometre Siq gorge — Petra’s narrow natural canyon entrance, its walls rising 80 metres on either side — was used for the horse-riding approach sequence. Spielberg’s production filmed in Jordan for several days in 1988. The film’s production designer Elliott Scott worked around the fact that Al-Khazneh’s interior is a plain, undecorated chamber — the elaborate interior seen in the film was built entirely on a soundstage in England.

The film had an immediate and lasting effect on Petra’s standing as a travel destination. Visitor numbers roughly tripled in the years following the 1989 release. Today Petra receives over a million visitors annually. The Jordanian government formally acknowledged the film’s role in establishing modern awareness of the site.