Stone Stuff Rocks!

So I'm going to put stuff made of stone on this blog.
Stone buildings, stone art, stone stuff. Let's start off with a golden oldie: Petra.

Petra was the capital of the Nabataeans, who today I learned existed. They built the city possibly as far back as 300s BC, although it wasn't known to Europeans until Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt visited in 1812.
Well done Johann.

All the buildings there are apparently carved out of the mountain face. This seems like a pretty roundabout way of making a stone building, but it's hard to argue with results. The most famous building is Al Kazneh, "The Treasury", shown below.

There are plenty more buildings there as well, of course, but this one probably rocks the hardest. The picture at the top of the page is actually of "The Monestary", which is pretty good too I guess but only from flattering angles, in my opinion. Here it is from the front:

As you can see, it's no Al Kazneh.