The Nabatean city of Petra made its Hollywood debut in 1989 in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”, starring Harrison Ford. In The Last Crusade, Indiana Jones is looking for the Holy Grail, and what better place to house it than in a real-life place called The Treasury? That is the popular tourist attraction, Al Khazneh, in Petra, Jordan, a giant façade of an ornately carved sandstone temple, dating from the 1st century AD. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is also the film that put Petra on the collective wish lists of Western audiences. In fact, many people don't know that The Treasury is one of dozens of buildings and sites in the historic Nabatean city.
There's no doubt that Spielberg's decision and his location search team chose the perfect location for the film's climax, since the gigantic intricately carved sandstone temple is the perfect place to house “the Holy Grail”, the object of Indiana Jones' desire. Instead, let's pretend that Hollywood doesn't continue to propagate other movies with the eponymous character. Harrison Ford has played many famous characters from movies, but perhaps the most iconic is Indiana Jones. While most of the film doesn't spend much screen time in the towering red rock formations of this popular Jordanian shooting location, the third act absorbs everything.
With rumors that Chris Pratt (Parks and Recreation, Guardians of the Galaxy) will replace Ford in a reboot, we take a look at the original series' most exotic filming locations, which you can still travel to today. The same moment Indiana Jones, his father Henry, Sallah and Marcus Brody arrive at the Temple of the Sun. The entire sequence was shot on Monsul Beach, in the province of Almería, in Andalusia, Spain, in the Cabo de Gata-Níjar Natural Park. Throughout four spectacular quality films that undoubtedly vary, director Steven Spielberg and franchise star Harrison Ford have traveled from the bustling streets of Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro in Shanghai to Argentina's dazzling Iguazu Falls.
Before the film's release in the late 1980s, only a few thousand tourists visited the site per year, but now the site is filled with almost a million a year. Known for being “the place at the end of Indiana Jones”, Petra has a much richer history than being the mere location of Spielberg's blockbuster production. However, the release of his third Indiana Jones film, which featured the Al Khazneh temple in a prominent way, helped boost tourism significantly. That year, the city's carved pink-red sandstone facades appeared in the hit movie Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade.
The location, which appeared during the climax of the 1989 film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, is a stunning backdrop for the mystery and chaos of the film's final moments. Go see it for your Indiana Jones moment, stay and explore because you may never return (although you'll want to).
