Petra with Kids: Family-Friendly Tours & Activities — Trip Planner

Petra with kids, realistically

Under-twelves enter free, which helps, but the walking does not: two kilometres of Siq before the Treasury appears, and roughly eight kilometres round if you add the Monastery steps. Past the visitor centre the surface turns to gravel and then bare rock, so a carrier beats wheels. Shade essentially runs out once you leave the gorge. Donkey handlers press rides on tired children very insistently.

What's actually worth your time in Petra

The Siq delivers the Treasury and everybody photographs it, but Ad-Deir, the Monastery, is the better facade and its eight hundred rock-cut steps thin the crowd to almost nobody. The Royal Tombs glow properly in late afternoon light, not morning. Little Petra, ten minutes up the road at Siq al-Barid, is free and has painted Nabataean ceilings. You cannot go inside the Treasury itself, only stand before it.

When the weather turns in Petra

Rain closes Petra, and rightly, because the Siq is a flash-flood channel, which is exactly why the Nabataeans cut a diversion tunnel at its mouth. The authority shuts the gorge on a forecast, so a wet morning may simply cancel your day rather than dampen it. Wadi Musa sits above a thousand metres and can snow in January. The free museum and a Turkish bath are what remain.

What things cost in Petra

Entry is 50 dinars for one day, 55 for two and 60 for three if you sleep in Jordan; day-trippers who do not sleep here pay 90. The Jordan Pass at 70 to 80 covers all of that plus the visa fee. Petra by Night is a separate ticket around 17. A mansaf dinner in Wadi Musa runs 8 to 15, and the JETT coach from Amman sits in the low teens.

Petra's museums, and which one to pick

Only one museum here counts, and your park ticket already covers it: the Petra Museum beside the visitor centre, opened in 2019 with Japanese funding, air-conditioned, and genuinely good on how the Nabataeans engineered dams, cisterns and the channel that kept the Siq from flooding. The older archaeological museum inside the basin occupies a rock-cut chamber and holds a handful of cases. That is the entire offering.

When to go to Petra

The month to avoid is January — around 13°C (55°F) with roughly 8 rain days. Prices and crowds track the weather here: May is the sweet spot, January the month most people skip.

Pack for peak season: Summer clothes, plus one light layer for air-con and evenings, High-SPF sunscreen, sunglasses, and a refillable water bottle, Comfortable walking shoes — every guide on this site assumes you'll use them.