Qasr Kharana: The Desert Castle in Photos

Standing alone beside the highway in Jordan’s Eastern Desert, Qasr Kharana is the best-preserved and least understood of the Umayyad desert castles, already standing by AD 710. This album walks around its solid towered walls, through the entrance passage and up the stairs, into the courtyard and the vaulted suites of rooms, and closes in on the stucco rosettes, cross vault and sawtooth band of the decorated upper floor, before stepping back to see the castle in its open landscape.