A Pergamon tour from Izmir heads north to the royal hill above Bergama. This route climbs the Acropolis first, sleeps in the town, then walks the lower streets before the road home. For island trips, open Greece Tours on the homepage.
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In which order do the towns appear on a Pergamon tour from Izmir?
The road north leaves Karsiyaka and Cigli behind and crosses the Gediz plain at Menemen. It passes Aliaga and the Candarli turn, then reaches Bergama. This route keeps that order, so a Pergamon tour from Izmir meets the towns one after another.
Karsiyaka is the first district that a Pergamon tour from Izmir leaves behind. Its name means “the opposite shore” in Turkish, and it lies in the north of the Gulf of Izmir. The centre stands 6 kilometres north of the traditional centre of Izmir. The railway to Menemen, opened in the nineteenth century, set the district growing.
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Cigli follows, on the north-western side of the Izmir urban area. The district stands on the plain that the old deposits of the Gediz River formed. The ground was swamp and reeds before the city spread over it. An organised industrial zone there counts as a significant economic hub.
Two roads share the corridor north of the city. The O-33, called the North Aegean Motorway, is a toll motorway. It runs beside the state road D550 for much of its route. Both roads point toward Bergama, where a Pergamon tour from Izmir ends the road leg.
Menemen lies 35 kilometres from the centre of Izmir. A Pergamon tour from Izmir meets the Gediz plain here, fertile land of alluvial soil from the river. The Gediz is the lifeline of the district. Farming and stock breeding carry the economy of the district.
The district borders Manisa Province on the east. In the west it reaches the sea along a coast of 27 kilometres. The Gediz River passes through the district. Earthenware pottery from Menemen has been known across Turkey for centuries, and the trade is highly developed.
Aliaga stands in the heart of ancient Aeolia. Dumanli Mountain rises beside its coast, and Yunt Mountain lies to the north-east. The district has a large port for oil and bulk cargo. An oil refinery and ship dismantling add to the economy, with iron and steel and petrochemical industry beside them.
Past Aliaga comes the turn to Candarli, which a Pergamon tour from Izmir passes on its way north. The town sits on the northern coast of the Gulf of Candarli, opposite Aliaga. Its ancient name was Pitane, and it was the leading port in the days of the kingdom of Pergamon.
The landmark of Candarli is its castle, rebuilt in the fifteenth century by Grand Vizier Candarli Halil Pasha the Younger. He named the town after his own family. The academic philosopher Arcesilaus was born in ancient Pitane. Fishing and a tourist trade give the town its work.
Bergama is the last town in this order. The ruins of the ancient city lie north and west of the modern town. Coming from the south, the road reaches the town first. At Bergama the road north ends for a Pergamon tour from Izmir. This route spends its one night in the town.
What did the young train for at the gymnasium met on a Pergamon tour from Izmir?
The young of Pergamon trained for running, wrestling and public life. A Pergamon tour from Izmir passes their gymnasium on the southern slope below the Acropolis. The Attalid kings provided it to educate the young members of the city’s elite.
This route meets the gymnasium on the south slope, below the royal hill. The main entrance stood at the south-east corner of the lowest terrace. A Pergamon tour from Izmir therefore reads the complex from the bottom upward. Each terrace had places for one kind of exercise. Researchers add a second idea: the terraces also suited different age classes.
King Eumenes II dedicated the gymnasium in the early second century BC. It ranked among the largest gymnasia in the Greek world and among the largest public buildings of the city. Seven honorary decrees for its gymnasiarchs, the men who ran it, date from about 133 BC. They show how much it mattered to civic identity.
The lowest and southernmost terrace is small, and it held almost no buildings. Scholars read it as the boys’ gymnasium. The youngest pupils practised there on open ground, while the teenagers trained on the terrace above. A Pergamon tour from Izmir starts its climb on this plain strip of the complex.
The middle terrace was meant mainly for running, in summer and in winter. A roofed stadium, called the Basement Stadium, lay where the middle terrace meets the upper one. A two-storey hall stood on its north side. A small temple of the Corinthian order rose in its east part.
The upper terrace is the largest of the three. Its courtyard, ringed by colonnades, is read as a palaestra. This was the part of a gymnasium used for wrestling, boxing and ball games. That courtyard is the highest ground of the gymnasium that a Pergamon tour from Izmir visits. A large hall for feasts stood in its centre.
Beyond the north colonnade lay a lecture room shaped like a small theatre, probably built in Roman times. Greek gymnasia held lectures and discussions on philosophy, literature and music, so the room fits the type. A Pergamon tour from Izmir therefore meets study as well as sport on this slope.
In the west of the upper terrace stood an Ionic temple, the central sanctuary of the gymnasium. Roman builders later put a bath complex over the eastern area, and more Roman baths rose west of the temple. Communal bathing belonged to gymnasium life in general, and the baths here follow that custom.
The Hermaea were festivals for the god Hermes. Their athletic contests were normally held in gymnasia and palaestrae. Written sources attest the Hermaea at Pergamon. A gymnasium supplied the means of training and competition for athletic contests, so the young trained there to compete.
Seen from the top, the plan is clear. Boys practised on open ground at the bottom, and runners trained in the middle. The largest terrace held the palaestra, the hall and the temple. A Pergamon tour from Izmir ends its walk through the gymnasium with that whole ladder of training in view.
Which sanctuaries of Demeter and Hera climb the slope on a Pergamon tour from Izmir?
Two sanctuaries share the hillside of ancient Pergamon. Demeter’s occupies the middle level of the south slope, and Hera Basileia’s lies north of the gymnasium. This route gives a Pergamon tour from Izmir the afternoon of day one for both.
The middle level of the south slope holds the sanctuary of Demeter, a plot of 50 by 110 metres. Use of the site reaches back to the fourth century BC. After the Acropolis in the morning, a Pergamon tour from Izmir turns to the slopes in the afternoon.
Visitors entered from the east through a propylon, a monumental gateway. It led into a courtyard with a stoa, a covered walkway, on three sides. The Ionic temple of Demeter stood at the centre of the courtyard’s western half. It was a straightforward temple in antis, a plan whose porch is formed by extensions of the side walls.
The temple that a Pergamon tour from Izmir reaches here measures 6.45 by 12.7 metres. Its Hellenistic walls were of local marble, with a marble frieze carved with bucrania. Under Antoninus Pius, in the second century AD, builders added a porch in the Corinthian order.
Boa and her sons Philetaerus and Eumenes built the temple for Demeter. The sanctuary was renovated twice in the Hellenistic period. Philetaerus led the first renovation, and Queen Apollonis, wife of Attalus I, led the second. Her buildings followed the design language of his, so the precinct reads as one plan.
In the east part of the courtyard, more than ten rows of seats faced the northern stoa. They were laid out for participants in the mysteries of Demeter, with room for roughly 800 initiates. Elsewhere in Greece, Demeter’s Thesmophoria festival was for women only and lasted three days at Athens. At Pergamon, the seats are tied to the mysteries.
Two goddesses share the slope in a Pergamon tour from Izmir. Demeter was the goddess of the harvest and agriculture. Hera was the goddess of marriage, women and family, and queen among the twelve Olympian gods. Her Pergamon title, Basileia, means the Queen. Her sanctuary lay on the Lower Acropolis.
The Hera sanctuary stood to the north of the gymnasium’s upper terrace. It rests on a pair of parallel terraces. The southern lies at about 107.4 metres above sea level, and the northern at about 109.8 metres. A staircase of eleven steps, about 7.5 metres wide, linked them. It descended from the front of the temple.
The temple of Hera occupied the centre of the upper terrace and faced south. It was about 7 metres wide and 12 metres long, on a base of three steps. Its Doric front carried a row of four columns. Every other building there was of trachyte, a volcanic rock, but the temple’s visible part was marble.
The surviving architrave inscription shows that this was the temple of Hera Basileia, erected by Attalus II. He reigned in the second century BC, so the temple dates to that century. The Demeter shrine is the older of the two. Day one of a Pergamon tour from Izmir ends with the night in Bergama.
How did walls, gates and agoras shape a Pergamon tour from Izmir?
Pergamon had a wall, a gatehouse, two agoras and one winding main street. Eumenes II enlarged the wall to circle the whole hill. The lower-town day of a Pergamon tour from Izmir follows that stone plan.
Walls come first in the story of the city plan. Philetaerus, or his successor Attalus I, built a wall around the whole upper city. Under Eumenes II and Attalus II the city expanded a great deal, and a larger wall followed.
The wall of Eumenes II, with its gates, surrounded the entire hill and not just the upper city. It ran all the way down to the Selinus river. The walls reached their greatest extent in his reign. The hill that a Pergamon tour from Izmir climbs on day one lies inside that ring.
The Gate of Eumenes, a monumental gatehouse, was built south of the Acropolis as part of that wall. The main road of the city starts at this gate, in the lower city. The houses of the modern town begin at the gateway. Day two of a Pergamon tour from Izmir covers the lower town, where this gate stands.
The lower agora was the commercial centre of the city, and it lay south of the Acropolis. It was 80 metres long and 55 metres wide. Its rectangle was built in three levels to suit the steep terrain. Laying out the agoras took extensive work on the cliff face and terracing.
Of these levels, the upper one and the main one opened onto a central courtyard. Rooms on the lower level stood only on the south and east sides, because of the slope. A columned hall in the centre held small shop spaces and other rooms. Doric stoas, covered public walkways, a large well and shops also belonged to the market.
Civic events were held on the Acropolis from the reign of Philetaerus. Over time the upper agora was developed at the south end of that area. A Temple of Zeus was built there under Attalus I. A Pergamon tour from Izmir passes from the upper agora to the lower agora.
Under Eumenes II, halls rose in the upper agora, and researchers read their back rooms as places of trade. After these works the upper agora served as a centre for trade and spectacle. Its stoas, shops and a small temple of Hermes date to the second half of the second century BC.
The main street winds up the hill to the Acropolis in a series of hairpin turns. Shops and warehouses stood along it. Andesite blocks paved this chief street of the city, and a drain carried water down the slope. The street joins the two halves of a Pergamon tour from Izmir: the lower town and the hill.
The plan of Pergamon was shaped by the extreme steepness of its site. Streets turned hairpin corners to make the climb as comfortable and quick as possible. The southeast slope and the whole western slope were also opened up by streets. Streets laid out for that reason steer every climb of a Pergamon tour from Izmir.