Campus Moncloa
Campus of International Excellence
The Monastery Ad Deir (Miguel Gomez Heras). Award scientific photography category of Heritage cluster
The Monastery (Ad Deir) is the largest monument in the Nabataean city of Petra in Jordan. Researchers within the Petrology Applied to Heritage Conservation at the Institute of Geosciences IGEO, belonging to the UCM and CSIC, have been working for two years, in collaboration with the Hashemite University of Jordan, in an AECID-funded research project. This project helped to improve the knowledge of the weathering processes of the facades that comprise this important archaeological city, as 2012 marks the 200th anniversary of its rediscovering for the western world. Research was focused on the characterisation of soluble salts and their sources as one of the main weathering agents in some of the monuments in Petra, being The Monastery one of them.