An Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara joins the ruins of the Ionian coast to the royal hill of the north. This route gives day one to Ephesus, sleeps in Bergama, then climbs the Acropolis. For island trips, open Greece Tours on the homepage.
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How long are the roads of an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara?
Three road legs shape an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara. Izmir to Selcuk is at least 70 kilometres. Selcuk to Bergama takes close to three hours. Bergama back to Izmir takes between 90 and 105 minutes.
Day one begins where the morning landing at Izmir ends. Selcuk, the town beside Ephesus, lies at least 70 kilometres south of the city. The drive takes between an hour and an hour and a quarter. That first road sets the pace of an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara for the hours that follow.
For other regions, Turkey tours on the homepage run from Istanbul to Cappadocia and the south coast.
Day one holds three blocks: the road to Selcuk, the day at Ephesus, and the long road north to Bergama. This route sets no clock times for them. The length of each road shapes the day instead. Ephesus fills the hours between the two drives. The one fixed point is the night in Bergama, where day one ends.
The longest road joins Selcuk to Bergama. It measures at least 170 kilometres and takes close to three hours. The northbound road of an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara runs back through Izmir. The Aliaga district borders the district of Bergama on the south, so that stretch comes last.
The Izmir ring road, the O-30, is a 60.2 kilometre motorway around the Gulf of Izmir. It runs from Balcova to Menemen as a bypass for through traffic. Its building began to relieve the congested D.550. The O-31 toll motorway meets it, and the Belevi exit of the O-31 connects to the D.550 into Selcuk.
At Menemen a cloverleaf interchange lets the ring road continue as the O-33. The O-33 runs north beside the Izmir to Canakkale state road and has an exit for Aliaga. It connects Izmir with Aliaga and the port at Candarli and eases heavy vehicle traffic on the state road. The way to Bergama follows the Menemen and Aliaga line.
Bergama lies at least 100 kilometres north of central Izmir by road. The main highway, the E87 from Izmir to Canakkale, passes west of the town near the coast. The bus terminal stands at the junction between that highway and the main road into town. From there the centre lies 7 kilometres to the north-east.
Pergamon is a common day trip from Izmir. That trip needs a drive of 90 to 105 minutes in each direction, depending on traffic. A night in Bergama removes the first of those drives from day two. One night in town therefore fits an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara, as the morning begins below the hill.
The Acropolis gates open in the morning and close in the late afternoon or the evening, by season. A start at opening gives the hill before the crowds and the heat arrive. Shade on the summit is limited in summer. An early start on an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara therefore meets the summer heat later in the day.
The way back runs south from Bergama to Izmir. The distance is at least 100 kilometres, the same as on the way north. Izmir Adnan Menderes Airport lies south of the city. The return leg closes an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara on that road, ahead of the evening flight.
Day two keeps a fixed order: Pergamon in the morning, then the road south, then the evening flight. This route sets no clock times for it either, as for day one. The visit takes the hours between the opening of the gates and the start of the drive south. The airport stands last in that order, after the road.
What does the Bakircay valley give to an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara?
The Bakircay valley gives Bergama a flat river plain, a Mediterranean climate and mountains to the north and south. An Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara ends its first day on that inland farmland, among cotton, olive and pine-nut country.
Izmir Province holds the district and municipality of Bergama, and the ancient city of Pergamon stands inside it. The district is not part of the metropolitan area of Izmir city. Bergama covers more ground than any other district of Izmir Province. Within this district, north of Izmir, an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara lodges for its single night.
To the north, the district shares a border with three districts of Balikesir Province: Ayvalik, Burhaniye and Ivrindi. To the west, its neighbour is Dikili, another district of Izmir Province. Along that northern line, Bergama touches the limit of Izmir Province and the start of the Balikesir lands beyond it.
The alluvial plain of the Bakircay River shapes the whole district. Bergama sits in the middle of that plain, and the town centre lies at 68 metres above sea level. On that flat ground, an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara lays its night stop before the Pergamon morning.
The Bakircay has a Latin name, Caicus, and an ancient Greek name, Kaikos. It rises in the Golcuk mountains and runs out into the Gulf of Candarli. At Pergamon, the river breaks through the surrounding mountains and hills. It then flows in a wide arc to the southwest.
The ancient city stands on the north edge of the Caicus plain, in the historic region of Mysia. Two streams touch the old city: the Bergamacay runs through it, and the Kestelcay passes along its eastern side. Tributary streams also run down into the plain from the Madra Mountains.
The Caicus plain is not open to the sea, because the Karadag massif blocks the way. The old city lies 26 kilometres from the modern Aegean coastline, which gives the area a strongly inland character. That puts the night of an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara in an inland valley, not at the shore.
Madra Mountain stands north of Bergama and Yunt Mountain south of it, so the plain lies between two ranges. The Madra range belongs to the northern Aegean part of western Anatolia. It forms part of the border between Izmir and Balikesir provinces. The valley itself is built mostly of volcanic rock, particularly andesite.
Close to the line followed by an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara, the Madra range carries the Kozak Plateau. The plateau lies 20 kilometres north-west of Bergama, at an altitude of 500 to 1,000 metres. Granite is its main rock, and its granite tors are named a rare geological heritage. A part of the Ida-Madra Geopark lies on the plateau.
Bergama has a Mediterranean climate, with hot, dry summers and mild, rainy winters. That is the weather type of the northern Aegean: dry heat in summer and rain in winter. The Kozak highland differs from the plain. There the climate is continental Mediterranean, with winters harsher and summers warmer than on the Aegean coast.
The plain grows cotton, tobacco, tomatoes, olives, maize and wheat. Granite, marble, gold and perlite are worked in the region, and stone quarries are in operation. These trades fill the working life of the valley where an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara halts.
Pine nuts are an important income on the Kozak Plateau, and the nuts are exported. The tree behind them is the stone pine, which flourishes up to 700 metres where granite is the main rock. Carpet making and kilim weaving are traditional trades in the district, and about eighty villages weave Bergama carpets.
Which kings built the city seen on an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara?
Attalid kings ruled Pergamon from the third century BC to the second. Philetaerus founded the line, and Attalus III, the last king, ended it. Day two of an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara gives its morning to their city.
The story of an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara starts with Philetaerus, a ruler of the third century BC. He served King Lysimachus as commander of Pergamon, where the king kept a treasury of about 9,000 talents of silver. The ancient writer Strabo records this sum. His adopted heir, Eumenes I, always regarded him as the true founder.
Philetaerus spent that treasure on improving his own city and the cities of his neighbours. He built temples and the first palace of Pergamon, and he added to its fortifications. He also gave gifts to neighbouring cities and temples. Though nominally under Seleucid control, he held considerable autonomy. Coins of the later dynasty carried his bust.
Eumenes I ruled next, in the third century BC. He never took the title of king, yet he held all of a king’s powers. His rule added lands in north-western Asia Minor to the territory of Pergamon. In the city, a festival called the Eumeneia was set up in his honour.
Attalus I was the first Attalid to take the title of king. He ruled Pergamon as the leader of a wholly independent kingdom. His victory over the Galatians came early in his reign. A triumphal monument for it rose on the acropolis. The morning at Pergamon on an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara covers that same hill.
Attalus I also paid for art and monuments, in Pergamon and in Greek cities he sought as allies. One of these works was a stoa at Delphi. He also bought land sacred to Apollo for the people of Sicyon. By the end of his reign, Pergamon was a great centre of art and learning.
Attalus I took the added title Soter, which means Saviour. He ordered artwork and sculpture that commemorated the Pergamene victory. He married Apollonis of Cyzicus, and they had four sons. Attalus I died at the age of 72. The eldest, Eumenes, followed him as Eumenes II, and the second son later ruled as Attalus II.
Eumenes II came to the throne in the second century BC. He began a vast building programme to match the prominence of the capital. Pergamon was rebuilt on a monumental scale under him and his brother Attalus II. A visitor on an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara walks through the city that this programme rebuilt.
The Attalid goal was to make a second Athens, a cultural and artistic hub of the Greek world. A massive city wall, 4 kilometres long, was built in the same period. Scholars found a welcome at the court of Eumenes II. One of them was Crates of Mallus, founder of the Pergamene school of criticism.
Attalus II first shared the throne with his ailing brother. He kept the building programme going at home and was a patron of the arts and sciences. He also founded the city of Philadelphia in Lydia. Pergamon flourished under both brothers, and their period shaped the royal capital that an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara explores.
Attalus III was the last Attalid king, and he had no children. He gave his time to medicine, botany and gardening. The city was kept up but not improved during his reign. His will left the kingdom to the Roman Republic. The royal chapter of an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara closes with that will.
How is the Acropolis laid out for an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara?
Pergamon’s Acropolis crowns a steep hill about 300 metres high. Its buildings climb in terraces to a narrow summit. Walkers on an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara meet the palaces, arsenals, Athena sanctuary and Heroon along that ridge.
The hill falls away sharply on its north, west and east sides. On the north side, the rock forms a spur 70 metres wide, called the Garden of the Queen. The highest point lies to its south-east. The upper city runs another 250 metres to the south but is only 150 metres wide.
The main street of the ancient city climbed the hill in hairpin turns, because the slope is so steep. Its surface was made of andesite blocks, and the street included a drainage system. An Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara climbs this same hill during its day-two morning.
Two ways lead up to the Acropolis from the town: a winding road and a gondola line. The line is about 700 metres long and has 15 cabins, each with eight seats. It is a two-cable system with detachable cabins. The final approach to the summit is a stone ramp.
Ancient Pergamon was divided into an Upper City and a Lower City. The Upper City was the residence of the kings, and royal palaces, arsenals and large temples stood there. Terracing spread from the top of the hill to the south and west. The hilltop stage of an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara unfolds entirely inside this Upper City.
On the south side, three natural terraces make a route up to the top. The buildings stand one above another on terraces and face west, in full view from a great distance. Builders cut broad terraces into the slope, and that work removed almost all earlier structures. The extreme steepness of the site shaped the plan of the city.
The royal palaces lie east of the road that runs past the Athena sanctuary. They were large buildings with inner courtyards ringed by columns. The larger palace has a square courtyard, 25 metres on each side. A smaller palace lies to the north. On an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara, only the bottom of the walls remains to be seen.
The arsenals lie at the northern end of the Acropolis, beyond the palaces. Five long buildings stand parallel to one another, and their lengths range from 39 to 48 metres. They sit about 10 metres lower than the palaces. They held military supplies, and their place at the edge of the hill gave defenders a wide view.
The sanctuary of Athena holds the oldest temple in the city. The temple is Doric, an order that was rare in Asia Minor, where the Ionic order dominated. It had ten columns along the long sides and six at each end. Those who join an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara find its foundations, about 12.70 by 21.80 metres.
The Heroon was a shrine where the kings of Pergamon were worshipped. It is one of the buildings on the upper part of the Acropolis. Its inner courtyard, ringed by columns, measured 18 by 21 metres. A stoa, a covered walkway with seven marble columns, adjoined it on the east side.
The northern edge of the hill ends in sheer cuts, with a much steeper slope than the southern side. The hill rises high above the plain. From its terraces, an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara looks out over it. Rivers have crossed that plain since ancient times. The town of Bergama lies in view from the southern wall.
What does the Great Altar add to an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara?
King Eumenes II had the Great Altar built in the second century BC. It stood on a terrace of the Acropolis and carried a frieze of gods fighting Giants. Its foundation still stands, so an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara reaches the place itself.
The altar stood on one of the terraces of the Acropolis of Pergamon. The designers left out the usual stoa, a covered walkway of columns. For that reason the altar showed from below, on its terrace. On day two, this route spends the morning on the Acropolis. The terrace therefore falls inside an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara.
The altar was built under King Eumenes II. Researchers place the work within the first fifty years of the second century BC. One study narrows the years to between 166 and 156 BC, while other estimates start earlier. A reader of an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara can therefore state the century with confidence.
The base was almost square, with five steps running round the whole structure. Each side measured more than 33 metres, and the floor area came to about 1,200 square metres. The sources differ in the last digits, so the figures here are rounded. The foundation on the hill keeps that footprint.
The front stairway was almost 20 metres wide and faced west. It cut into the foundation on that side and led up to a columned superstructure. Two projecting wings flanked it: sea gods filled the northern one, and Dionysus with nymphs the southern one. The width lets an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara judge the monument’s scale.
The frieze showed the Gigantomachy, which is the battle between the Olympian gods and the Giants. Sculptors cut it in high relief, a style in which figures stand out strongly from the background. It ran all round the base, and the slabs stood more than two metres tall.
On the east side almost all the important Olympian gods were gathered, among them Zeus, Athena, Hera and Apollo. Artemis, Leto, Ares and Heracles stand there too. The south side began with Rhea, the great mother goddess of Asia Minor, who is also called Cybele. The north side opened with Aphrodite.
Above the base rose a hall of widely spaced columns with tops in the Ionic style. An encircling portico ran round the upper floor, above the carved band. Plans for a second columned hall in the inner court were never carried out.
On the upper level lay an inner court with a small fire altar. Its horseshoe shape is known from the remains. A second, smaller frieze ran along the walls of the court. It told the life of Telephus in order and stood 1.58 metres high. It is less well preserved than the outer band.
Izmir Pergamon Tour From Ankara covers Pergamon too.
Researchers name Zeus and his daughter Athena as the gods the altar was probably built for. The surviving scraps of inscription do not settle which god it honoured. The remnants are too small to answer that question. The reason for building it is also debated, and no theory has won agreement.
What remains on the hill is the foundation. The larger part of it lies at its original place, together with wall remnants. It is preserved and can be examined on site. In the nineteenth century the relief panels were carried to Berlin. Smaller portions of the frieze, found later, are also in Turkey.
The panels went to Berlin, so the terrace holds the base and not the main reliefs. At the altar terrace, an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara stands on the original ground of the monument.
Why is the library of Pergamon linked to parchment on an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara?
Beside Athena’s sanctuary, the library stood on the Acropolis that an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara climbs. Its rival for books was the library of Alexandria. The English word parchment comes from the name of Pergamon itself.
The library was set beside the sanctuary of Athena, the goddess of wisdom. Scholars link it with an annex of the northern stoa, a covered walkway, in that sanctuary. The exact building is not certain. The partly restored ruins sit on a hilltop near the sanctuary, among the other buildings of the Acropolis.
The library had four rooms. The westernmost is the largest, and it measures about 13.6 metres by 15.2 metres. The other three rooms are shorter and narrower, about 13.4 metres long, and they held the stacks. The Acropolis hilltop is where an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara spends the morning of day two.
Shelves lined the walls and held the scrolls. Builders left a gap of about 50 centimetres between the outer walls and the shelves. The gap stopped damp and let air circulate. Doorways from the stacks opened onto the colonnade, which gave readers a way to carry books out into the daylight.
The largest room held a statue of Athena about three metres tall, modelled on the statue in the Parthenon. Excavators found a colossal Athena in the temple area. They reasoned that it stood on a platform and that busts stood on a podium about 0.9 metres high.
Plutarch, a Greek writer of the first and second centuries AD, reports about 200,000 scrolls in the collection. He wrote long after the library reached its peak. No catalogue of the holdings survives, so the figure cannot be checked. The scrolls of the library that an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara reaches were largely written on parchment.
The Roman author Pliny the Elder tells of a rivalry between Kings Ptolemy and Eumenes over their libraries. Pergamon and Alexandria worked to gather more books, and both offered pay to attract scholars. Each sought the oldest copies of Homer’s poems. Pliny adds that Ptolemy banned the export of papyrus. Legend ties that ban to the birth of parchment.
Papyrus came from the pith of a wetland sedge, laid in strips in two layers at right angles. The plant grew abundantly across the Nile Delta. Egypt was the first to make papyrus, as early as the third millennium BC. Parchment is different: makers dried the skins of sheep, calves and goats under tension on a frame.
Pergamon comes up again in Ephesus Pamukkale Pergamon Tour From Bodrum.
The English word parchment comes from the Latin pergamenum, drawn from the name of Pergamon. The Roman word for writing skin was pergamena. The city was a flourishing centre of parchment production. Compared with papyrus, parchment gave a smoother surface and greater durability. An Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara therefore visits the place that gave the word its name.
Anyone on an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara who hears that Pergamon invented parchment is hearing a legend. Reference works call it a myth, since parchment was in use in Anatolia long before the city rose. Writing on leather had long been customary in the Near East. One explanation is that the city improved the process of making it.
Parchment later became the standard for important books where papyrus had been used. By the fourth century AD the change was under way. Parchment can even be recycled. An Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara thus ties three things to one hilltop. They are a goddess of wisdom, a rival library at Alexandria and a writing material.
How steep is the theatre met on an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara?
The theatre of Pergamon is the steepest of all ancient theatres, rising about 36 metres and seating around 10,000 people. It stands on the Acropolis hill above Bergama, and an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara visits it on day two.
The seats lean against the steep slope of the Acropolis hill. The hillside had no room for a full semicircle of seats, so the builders stacked the rows upward. Close to eighty rows climb the slope, and the seating rises about 36 metres in all. No other ancient theatre is steeper. The theatre faces west.
Two broad walkways cut the seating area into three tiers. Such walkways are called diazomata. Stairways 0.75 metres wide climb between the seats. They divide the lowest tier into seven wedges and the two upper tiers into six. The theatre is well preserved, so an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara still shows this plan.
The seats are cut from andesite and trachyte, two volcanic rocks. A marble seat of honour was set above the centre of the first walkway. That walkway divides the lowest tier from the middle one. The whole theatre had room for around 10,000 people. An actor speaking at normal volume on the stage can be heard in the top rows.
The early theatre had no permanent stage building. A wooden stage went up for each performance and came down again afterwards. Three rows of square holes in the terrace floor once held its support beams. The stage itself is gone, yet an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara can still read its plan in those holes.
The site explains the timber stage. The terrace had no space for the round orchestra that a Greek theatre normally has. A road ran in front of the theatre, so a stone stage house had no room either. A permanent stage also meant losing the view from the seats. A marble stage building came only in the first century BC.
Another page that includes Pergamon is Pergamon Assos and Troy Tour by Flight From Ankara.
Below the seats runs a terrace about 247 metres long and up to 17.4 metres wide. A high retaining wall holds the ledge against the drop of the hillside. The wooden stage stood on this strip. For an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara, this strip is the level ground below the sloping seats.
A stoa frames the long side of the terrace. A stoa is a covered walkway, and this one is lined with Doric columns. A tower building at the south end gave one way in. At the far end stood a temple in the Ionic style, so two kinds of column met along one strip.
At the northern end of the terrace lay the Temple of Dionysus, the patron god of theatre and wine. The temple was built of marble. It stood on a podium 4.5 metres above the level of the terrace. The god of the stage therefore had his shrine at the end of the stage terrace.
The terrace overlooks the plain below. Nothing permanent stood on the terrace to block the sight line to the temple at its end. A stone stage house meant losing that outlook, so the temporary stage kept it. From the upper rows, an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara looks over the same open plain without a break.
Slope, timber stage and open view all follow from one choice: the builders let the hillside decide the plan. The result is a steep, tiered theatre with a long terrace at its foot. An Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara meets that plan on day two, during its morning at Pergamon.
What stands in the Temple of Trajan during an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara?
The Temple of Trajan crowns the Acropolis, which an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara visits on day two. Trajan began this marble temple, and his successor Hadrian finished it. It rests on a vaulted terrace built across the slope.
The Temple of Trajan is also called the Trajaneum and the Temple of Zeus Philios. Coins minted in Pergamon show Trajan sharing a temple with Zeus Philios. It stands on the highest point of the citadel. The ruin is clearly visible from the lower city, so an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara spots it early.
Trajan began the temple, and Hadrian completed it, so the building belongs to the second century. It honoured Zeus Philios, whom the Romans called Iupiter Amicalis, and both emperors, who received worship there. Pergamon gained the right to a second temple of the imperial cult, and the Trajaneum is that temple. In Hadrian’s reign builders inserted further stoas.
The summit gave little room for so large a building. Workers levelled the rock, and Roman engineers built a platform on arches. Parallel supporting walls ran across the slope, and barrel vaults covered them. These vaults carry the temple and its courtyard, the base of what an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara sees.
On the valley side the terrace ends in an ashlar wall 23 metres high. Ashlar means stone cut into neat blocks. The upper part of this wall, with a large arch in front of each vault, is only a facing. In the lower part the builders filled the vaults to form a passageway.
Ankara also features in Ephesus Pamukkale Tour From Ankara.
The temple stood on a high rectangular podium, 68 metres long and 58 metres wide, and marble covered it. A powerful plinth of dark andesite blocks survives in good condition. Within the morning of an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara, these measurements outline a sanctuary on the upper Acropolis.
The temple itself was a peripteros, which means one colonnade surrounded the building on every side. Six columns stood on each short side. The capitals were Corinthian, carved with leaves, and the architectural elements were cut from white marble. The Corinthian colonnade made the temple the centrepiece of Roman Pergamon.
Stoas, which are covered walkways lined with columns, enclosed the west, north and east sides of the courtyard. Their columns were monolithic, each cut from one block of stone, and their capitals took a special Corinthian form. The northern stoa stood high and shut off the area. Because of the terrain, the rear stoa stood 5 metres higher.
Colossal cult statues of Trajan and Hadrian stood in the cella, the inner room of the temple. Each statue was acrolithic: a wooden core carried a head, hands and feet of marble. Excavators found statue fragments in the rubble of the cella. Those fragments let an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara picture what once filled the room.
Later centuries gave the substructure another use. In the Byzantine period the wall facing the valley became part of the fortifications of the Acropolis. Builders repaired it more than once over the centuries. Parts of the substructure served as cisterns and warehouses. Marble from the building was burned for lime until the end of the nineteenth century.
Earthquakes damaged the temple and left it in ruins. German archaeologists rebuilt part of it by anastylosis, which means reassembling original loose pieces. Half of the front pediment of the temple has been rebuilt. The foundations, vaults and plinth stand as ruins beneath it. An Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara meets a temple that is partly rebuilt and partly ruin.
Who healed at the Asklepieion on an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara?
Priest doctors and the physician Galen worked at the Asklepieion, the sanctuary of the healing god Asklepios. This route reaches it in the morning of day two. The Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara meets this place of medicine early.
The Asklepieion lies in a valley outside Bergama, about three kilometres southwest of the Acropolis. Its story begins in the fourth century BC, when a modest enclosure grew around a spring. Legend credits the founding to a man named Archias. Under the Attalid kings, in the third and second centuries BC, the sanctuary grew larger.
Walkers who follow an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara into this valley see the Roman design of the second century. Under the emperor Hadrian, the precinct roughly quadrupled in size. The older altars, temples and sleeping area in the west stayed its ritual core. By the third century, earthquake damage had left the sanctuary in decline.
Patients arrived along the sacred way, a road paved with marble that runs close to a kilometre. Near the entrance it becomes the Via Tecta, the covered way. The last stretch gained its colonnades in the second century. At the gate, a priest doctor examined each arrival and decided who was allowed to enter.
For more on Ankara, see Izmir Ephesus Tour By Flight From Ankara.
Past the gate, an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara enters a courtyard of about 110 by 130 metres. Colonnaded walks run along three sides of it. A monumental gateway, the propylon, marks the end of the road. The library stood north of the gateway and also served the cult of the emperor.
The sanctuary had its own theatre, set beside the north-west corner of the courtyard. Its seating holds 3,500 people. Builders added the theatre, the north colonnade and the library under Hadrian. An earthquake in the second century damaged the colonnades near the library; repairs followed. The theatre was judged necessary for the entertainment of patients, and it supported their healing.
The sanctuary reached by an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara held two round buildings. One is a domed temple of Asklepios, 23 metres across. The other, in the south-east corner, is a two-storey treatment centre, traditionally called the Temple of Telesphorus. Its circular plan let patients walk in procession as part of the cure.
At the centre of the courtyard, the Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara meets a vaulted tunnel. This cryptoporticus leads to the treatment centre. Spring water runs down through a gap in one of its stairs. Painted plaster still decorates part of the wall. Researchers later found that the water has radioactive properties.
Healing rested on sleep and dreams. Patients slept in rooms for nights on end, waiting for a dream to name the treatment. In those dreams, Asklepios appeared and told them how to cure the illness. Other methods were hot and cold baths, massage, mud, cupping, set diets and music. Courtyard pools and fountains served for bathing and drinking.
The writer Aelius Aristides came to the sanctuary to seek relief from a long illness. Like other patients, he slept on the temple grounds and wrote down his dreams. His Sacred Tales gather those dreams over almost thirty years. The Asklepieion visit of an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara covers the same sanctuary grounds.
Galen was born in Pergamon, the son of an architect named Aelius Nicon. Galen reports that Asklepios appeared to Nicon and told him to send his son to study medicine. At sixteen, he began his studies at the healing temple. He worked in the sanctuary for years and later became personal physician to Emperor Marcus Aurelius.
Why is the Red Basilica part of an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara?
Built of red brick for Egyptian gods, the Red Basilica later served as a church. It stands in the middle of Bergama, the night stop for an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara. Its walls link Roman worship with the Pergamon of the Book of Revelation.
Turkish calls the ruin Kizil Avlu, which means Red Courtyard. The name comes from its walls, which are built entirely of red brick. Those walls still stand close to 20 metres high. Coloured marble once covered them, though none survives. Brick on this scale was unusual in Asia Minor, though more familiar in Italy at the time.
A related page on Ankara: Ephesus Samos Tour From Ankara.
Red brick of this kind indicates that the architect was not local. The size and lavish work point to a rich patron who sent a Roman architect and brick masons to Pergamon. Facing these walls, an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara reads a design that outside builders drew up for the town.
The building began in the second century as a temple of Egyptian gods. An inscription tied to it names Serapis, Isis, Harpocrates and Osiris. Historians read the shrine as one of Isis or of Serapis. The sources leave the question open, and an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara faces it here.
The temple hall measures about 60 metres in length. It stood inside a walled precinct more than 260 metres long and about 100 metres wide. A door-sill cut from one block of marble, over 30 tons, still lies in place at the west entrance. Floors were laid with marble and granite brought from as far as Egypt.
Inside, the temple was one vast hall under a wooden roof with no inner columns. Windows seem to have lit only the western half. The eastern end was reserved for priests and their attendants. It housed a cult statue at least 10 metres high, standing on a raised podium.
In the Christian era, fire gutted the temple. In the fifth century, builders raised a church inside its shell. Rows of arches divided the interior into a nave and two aisles. The arches are gone, but part of the apse can still be seen. The builders also raised the floor, which hid the Roman paving.
Only local tradition tells to whom the church was dedicated, and it names St John. Accounts of the site also tie the church to the Pergamon of Revelation. The church kept the old temple walls, so one shell holds a Roman shrine and its Christian successor. Archaeologists have since restored the former floor level of the Roman hall.
The Book of Revelation names Pergamon third among seven cities, after Ephesus and Smyrna. Its letter to the city fills Revelation 2:12 to 17. Ephesus, the stop of day one, heads the same list. The two days of an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara thus reach the first and third cities named in it.
The ruin shows Roman engineering below ground. The court before the temple rests on a bridge over the Selinus, or Bergama Cayi. Two parallel barrel-vaulted tubes carry the water beneath it. The structure is close to 200 metres wide. On an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara, no bridge of its kind from antiquity is larger.
Two domed rotundas flank the temple, each about 18 metres high. The north one holds a small mosque for local worshippers. The south one is open to visitors, and soot from nineteenth-century machinery still darkens its walls. Roman cult, Christian worship and Muslim prayer used the site, a layered stop on an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara.
Readers interested in Ankara can open Ephesus Aphrodisias Tour From Ankara.
Which finds and ruins lie in lower Bergama on an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara?
Lower Bergama holds a museum of local finds, a Roman amphitheatre and the site of a Roman stadium. Roman aqueducts lie north of the town, and an Ottoman old quarter spreads around a mosque. This town is the overnight halt of an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara on day one.
The Bergama Museum stands south of Cumhuriyet Street, on the plot of an old cemetery. Its first plan set a rectangular courtyard ringed by galleries, with a showroom behind. The galleries suited open-air display, so works were shown there. A later hall opens off the courtyard.
The museum holds finds from the Bronze Age to the end of the Ottoman period. Diggers took them from Bergama and the land around it. For an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara, it is the local home of that record. Sculpture of the Pergamon school is a highlight, with Archaic finds from Pitane and Gryneion.
Terracotta figures from Myrina fill further cases. Local pottery of ancient Pergamon is there too: megara bowls, applique ceramics, Pergamon sigillata and oil lamps. Bronze Age bowls for daily use or offerings are shown with spouted vessels. Coins called kistophoroi, first struck in Bergama, are on display too.
A second collection shows daily life in the district. Carpets and rugs are sorted by region: Yuntdag, Kozak and Yagcibedir. Clothing of the Yoruk, Turkmen and Cepni tribes is shown with bridal and everyday dress from Bergama. Samples of woven cloth and hand embroidery fill further cases.
The night stop of an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara has a Roman amphitheatre in a valley below the acropolis. Two slopes face each other across a stream. Seats stepped down both slopes, which allowed a dam on the stream to fill the arena. A vaulted water channel was found there.
The arena was very large and was meant to outdo those of Ephesus and Smyrna. Stone blocks of private seats carry names cut into them. Amphitheatres were not common in the Roman East, which sets this one apart.
Builders cut the amphitheatre and the stadium into the lower bedrock south-west of the Selinus river. The area grew into a district of extensive Roman settlement in the second century. The district is known as the Roman Pleasure District and also as Musalla Mezarlik.
The acropolis has no spring of its own, so pipes of clay and lead brought water from the northern mountains. They ran down one valley and up the next. In the Roman period, aqueducts north of the city served a larger population. They are not part of the day-two plan of an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara.
Kapikaya Hill, outside the town, carries a sanctuary that dates from the Archaic period. Niches are cut inside it, and its builders developed it from a cave in the third century BC. A stop there is absent from the route of an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara.
More about Pergamon: Ephesus Pergamon Tour From Izmir.
South of the Selinus river, the Ottoman layout of bazaar, plane-tree squares, mosques, madrasas, baths and fountains shows clearly. The slopes north of the river were built up from the fourteenth century, with stone houses on terraced lanes. A public square was laid out in the eighteenth century on the site of the former market.
The Ulu mosque, called the Yildirim mosque as well, was built under Sultan Bayezid. Its inscription at the north gate dates it to the end of the fourteenth century. Three domes cover the middle aisle, and the mihrab has rich marble decoration. The minaret stands 38 metres tall, and the courtyard fountain carries writing by the poet Aski Efendi.
The museum, the amphitheatre and the old quarter lie within the town. Morning brings an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara to the acropolis and the Asklepieion.
What lies at the edge of Ephesus on day one of an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara?
Beyond the main Ephesus ruins lie three sites. They are the Cave of the Seven Sleepers, the so-called Tomb of St Luke and the harbour cemetery. All three add faith and burial history to an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara, within the Ephesus area.
The cave sits on a slope that faces Selcuk, a short drive from the lower gate of the site. A round Roman building stands between the ruins and Selcuk. The harbour cemetery lies to the west of the city. Each one marks the outer fringe of ancient Ephesus rather than its centre.
For readers weighing an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara, the legend is short. Seven young men of Ephesus fell asleep in a cave while hiding from persecution. One later went to buy food, and the townspeople stared at his old coins. The earliest written version comes from Jacob of Serugh, a Syriac bishop of the fifth and early sixth centuries.
A church was built over an early Christian catacomb here in the fifth century. The rock-cut chambers climb the hillside in tiers of brick vaults, apses and grave niches. Graves were cut into the stone, and Ephesian Christians sought burial near the sleepers for centuries. The Austrian archaeologist Franz Miltner dug the complex in the nineteen twenties.
Two church calendars name feast days for the sleepers. The Roman Martyrology gives 27 July. The Byzantine calendar gives 4 August and 22 October. Bones from tombs near Ephesus, taken for relics of the sleepers, were later carried to Marseille. Those links give the cave a long memory within an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara.
Among the fringe sites of an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara, the round monument raises a question of identity. Scholars call it the so-called Tomb of St Luke. Andreas Pulz of the Austrian Academy of Sciences studied the building. His work dates it to the middle of the second century, as a fountain.
The fountain was a circular structure with a ring of columns. It stood southeast of the State Agora, in the centre of a marketplace ringed by columned halls. A church rose on its podium in the second half of the fifth century, after the columned ring was removed. The research shows a water monument, not a grave.
A related page on Pergamon: Pergamon Tour From Izmir.
Explorers of the nineteenth century gave the building its tomb label. They found a relief of a bull beside a cross and announced the tomb of St Luke the Evangelist. John Wood first excavated the building. The bull matters because a winged ox is the symbol tied to Luke.
An older tradition places the tomb of Luke elsewhere. It holds that Luke died in Boeotia and lay at Thebes. His relics reached Constantinople in the fourth century. What remains at Ephesus is the circular foundation of a Roman building. Seen from an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara, it stays a monument without a proven grave.
The harbour necropolis is the largest cemetery of Ephesus and lies west of the city. Researchers estimate that Ephesus had at least 90 hectares of densely built burial ground, with more than 1,200 burial units. The burial houses average 8 metres in size and look strikingly alike. People used them from the imperial period far into late antiquity.
Digging began in the north and south of the harbour channel, ground that was almost completely unexplored. The graves also tell of ordinary lives: the average life expectancy of adults was almost 40 years. Two burial houses carry painting from late antiquity. This cemetery adds a quiet chapter to an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara.
Who dug Pergamon and why is it listed, in an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara?
A German engineer who supervised road building opened the first digs at Pergamon in September eighteen seventy-eight. UNESCO inscribed the site as a cultural landscape of nine locations. Across an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara, day two reaches that excavated hill.
Carl Humann was a German engineer. From eighteen sixty-seven to eighteen seventy-three he supervised the building of roads in Anatolia. Before that, in the winter of eighteen sixty-four to sixty-five, he visited the ruins of Pergamon. He used his influence there to stop the destruction of marble remains already partly uncovered.
The first dig began in September eighteen seventy-eight, with official permits from the Ottoman government. The director of the Berlin sculpture museum backed the work. The engineer ran the work on site until eighteen eighty-six. Throughout an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara, the hillside is the ground that this first campaign opened up for study.
Two more campaigns followed, in eighteen eighty to eighty-one and in eighteen eighty-three to eighty-six. Another German archaeologist then took the work on. He aimed for the fullest possible exposure of the city and its citadel. In the early twentieth century an architectural historian led the team, and other directors followed through the century.
German teams have dug at the site in separate periods since then. Their reports appear in German in the series Altertumer von Pergamon, published in Berlin. Part of the finds stand in a museum in Berlin. On the hill, an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara meets stones that scholars have studied since the late nineteenth century.
The German Archaeological Institute digs at Pergamon with the permission of the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism. With support from the Bergama Municipality and the Bergama Museum, the institute has mapped 12.5 square kilometres of Pergamon. Day two within an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara covers one corner of that mapped city.
For more on Pergamon, see Izmir Pergamon Biblical Cities Tour From Ankara.
UNESCO inscribed the site under the name Pergamon and its Multi-Layered Cultural Landscape. Nine separate locations of different size and kind make up that entry. The first holds the city on Kale Hill, and the others lie in the country around it. Behind an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara stands this wide frame, which reaches far beyond one morning.
The second location is the Kybele Sanctuary at Kapikaya, a rock-cut temple about 6 kilometres from Pergamon. Its planners gave it a view in line with Kale Hill. The tumuli are seven Hellenistic burial mounds. They form a ring around the city, built up from the third century BC onwards. Yigma Tepe and Tavsan Tepe are two of them.
The reason is layers of time. The landscape holds Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman remains. UNESCO says the site bears unique and exceptional testimony to Hellenistic urban and landscape planning. Along an Ephesus Pergamon tour from Ankara, a visitor can read those layers in the stones of the hill.
The Hellenistic city on Kale Hill has not been lived in since antiquity. The buffer zone round it was widened to hold every tumulus and its sight line to the hill. UNESCO also links Pergamon to schools, ideas and traditions in art and architecture. Together, the mounds express how the city shaped the nature around it.
The director of the German excavation team stresses that Pergamon is a whole city, not only an acropolis. People have lived in the town below the hill without a break. UNESCO therefore treats change over time as part of the site’s history. It also calls the Hellenistic capital a supreme example of fitting architecture to nature.