Hegra

Long before UNESCO listed it as Saudi Arabia's first World Heritage Site in 2008, Hegra — known in Arabic as Mada'in Salih, the "Cities of Salih" — was the Nabataean kingdom's second city after Petra, its more than 100 tombs carved into sandstone cliffs beginning around the 1st century BCE. Bedouin travelers avoided camping among those tombs for centuries, believing the site was cursed after the Quranic account of the prophet Salih and the tribe of Thamud, destroyed for hamstringing a sacred she-camel sent as a divine sign. Islamic tradition holds that the Prophet Muhammad passed through the site in 630 CE on the way to the Battle of Tabuk and told his companions not to enter the ruins or drink from its wells "unless weeping," instructing them instead to hurry past. That reputation kept the tombs remarkably intact — no looting, no resettlement — until Saudi Arabia opened Hegra to tourism in 2020, ending nearly a century of near-total isolation.