An Izmir Pergamon biblical cities tour from Istanbul reaches Pergamum, a city named in Revelation, in two days. This route flies to Izmir, drives north to Bergama for the night and returns the next evening. For the islands, open Greece Tours on the homepage.
Day one covers a first look at Izmir and the road north to Bergama. Day two covers the hill city of Pergamon. Then the road leads south to Izmir, old Smyrna, and the evening flight to Istanbul. Each card below opens a live GetYourGuide booking page.
What was the port of Adramyttium like, as told across an Izmir Pergamon biblical cities tour from Istanbul?
Adramyttium was an ancient port at the head of a gulf that carries the name of Edremit. The book of Acts, chapter twenty-seven, boards a ship from it. That ship opens the coast told across an Izmir Pergamon biblical cities tour from Istanbul. Oren marks the site.
The book of Acts, chapter twenty-seven, opens the sea voyage to Italy with one sentence about a ship. The party boarded a vessel from Adramyttium, which was about to call at ports along the Asian coast. The text names Sidon as the next landing. That line brings this port into the biblical record.
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Sources give the name as Adramyttion, Adramytteion, Atramyttion and Adramyteum. The Turkish town of Edremit is named after the ancient city. Yet the two are not one place. The city moved about 13 kilometres north-east to its present site, a short way inland from the gulf.
The first city stood at the head of the gulf, at Oren near Burhaniye. Burhaniye lies about four kilometres east of that site. Neither town lies on this route, which ends its northern leg at Bergama in Izmir Province. The coast is told as history across an Izmir Pergamon biblical cities tour from Istanbul. Balikesir Province holds both towns.
Aristotle is cited for a founding story. Adramytos, a son of King Alyattes of Lydia, gave the city his name. The founding falls in the sixth century BC. Leleges and people of Mysia had settled the ground first. Lydians, Cimmerians and Aeolian Greeks settled the area later. The sea beside it was the Gulf of Adramyttium.
An artificial port was built at Adramyttium in the early third century BC. A Roman house on the site had a northern hall of over fifteen rooms. Mosaic floors and frescoes decorated them. These finds lie beyond the route and are read about across an Izmir Pergamon biblical cities tour from Istanbul. Earthquake damage in Trajan’s reign is recorded.
In Roman times Adramyttium was the centre of a conventus iuridicus, a court district. Its jurisdiction included the Troad and the western half of Mysia. In the early fourth century the diocese of Adramyttium became a suffragan of the archdiocese of Ephesus. The diocese became defunct in the fifteenth century.
Herodotus places Adramyttium in the fertile plain of Thebe. Homer gives Thebe to King Eetion, whose daughter Andromache married Hector of Troy. Strabo puts Thebe sixty stadia from Adramyttium. In his day the people of Adramyttium held the plain. Across an Izmir Pergamon biblical cities tour from Istanbul, Thebe stays a name, as historians have not identified its site.
More about Pergamon: Izmir Pergamon Biblical Cities Tour From Ankara.
The Gulf of Edremit is an Aegean gulf in Balikesir Province. Its northern coast runs 70 kilometres and its southern coast 40. The Biga Peninsula lies to its north. Towns on the shore include Kucukkuyu, Havran and Armutova. Hamaxitus, Polymedium, Lamponeia and Antandrus were ancient settlements close to the north coast. Akcay lies 10 kilometres west of Edremit.
Edremit is a municipality and district of Balikesir Province, covering 682 square kilometres. The gulf is known for European sprat, olive and olive oil production. Across an Izmir Pergamon biblical cities tour from Istanbul, Burhaniye is the district known for its olive oil. Summers are hot and dry in Edremit, winters cool and wet, under a Mediterranean climate.
Strabo names Xenocles, an orator, among the people of Adramyttium. Xenocles lived in the first century BC and was a contemporary of Cicero. Plutarch lists him beside Dionysius of Magnesia and Menippus the Carian as teachers of oratory. Across an Izmir Pergamon biblical cities tour from Istanbul, Xenocles links the port to the years Cicero spent in Asia.
Where did the ship call at Mytilene, as told within an Izmir Pergamon biblical cities tour from Istanbul?
Mytilene, on the south-east shore of Lesbos, is the island town reached in the book of Acts, chapter twenty. Beyond the road, as met within an Izmir Pergamon biblical cities tour from Istanbul, Lesbos faces Turkey. The Mytilini Strait is about 5.5 kilometres wide at the narrowest point.
This route goes by air to Izmir and by road north to Bergama, so Mytilene lies beyond it. Lesbos is the third largest Greek island, and Greeks commonly call it Mytilene, after its capital. Acts only names the town. Later writers fill in the rest within an Izmir Pergamon biblical cities tour from Istanbul, Vitruvius among them.
Readers interested in Pergamon can open Pergamon and Sardis Biblical Cities Tour From Izmir.
Strabo, in book thirteen of his Geography, counts two harbours at Mytilene. The southern one can be closed and holds fifty triremes. The northern one is large and deep, and a mole shelters it. A small island lies off both harbours, and part of the city stands on it, he adds.
The ancient town began on a small island just offshore. That islet later joined Lesbos, creating a north and a south harbour. A channel 700 metres long and 30 metres wide once linked the two. The strait later filled with earth, and two moles of the north harbour lie just below the surface.
Vitruvius, the Roman architect, calls Mytilene a town built with magnificence and good taste. Its position, he adds, shows a lack of foresight. He names the winds that reach its alleys and streets. The remark stands in book one of his work, in the chapter on street directions and winds.
The theatre of Mytilene is an ancient building seen within an Izmir Pergamon biblical cities tour from Istanbul. Marble seats once lined a steep hollow in the hill of Agia Kyriaki, at the city’s western edge. Estimates put the seating at about 10,000 spectators.
The earliest surviving blocks are Hellenistic, and the preserved form belongs to the Late Roman phase. Plutarch tells that the theatre inspired Pompey’s theatre in Rome, the first permanent stone theatre there. The two buildings differ, since Pompey’s stands free and Mytilene’s is cut from the hillside.
Izmir Pergamon Tour From Istanbul covers Pergamon too.
The castle of Mytilene is one more building told within an Izmir Pergamon biblical cities tour from Istanbul. Justinian I’s reign, in the sixth century, is a proposed time for the first castle there. Francesco I Gattilusio made the first major changes in the fourteenth century.
The castle crowns a hill between the northern and southern harbours and covers 60 acres. The Upper Castle lies in the north, on the highest ground. Ottoman builders added the Lower Castle on the northwest side in the seventeenth century. Francesco’s square stone tower bears the arms of the Gattilusi and the Palaiologoi.
The archaeological collections of Mytilene stand in two buildings. Bronze Age finds from Thermi sit in an old mansion by the south harbour. The second building, purpose built, is rich in mosaics and sculpture. The town holds a large number of neoclassical buildings, and the Baroque church of Saint Therapon dominates the port.
The House of Menander holds a set of Roman mosaics, told within an Izmir Pergamon biblical cities tour from Istanbul. Orpheus plays his lyre among animals in its hall. The north stoa shows scenes from the comedies of Menander. The west stoa shows masks and a fishing scene.
Pittacus of Mytilene counts among the Seven Sages of Greece. His name is counted within an Izmir Pergamon biblical cities tour from Istanbul. Hyrradius was his father, and he lived in the seventh and sixth centuries BC. Sayings credited to him include “Know thine opportunity” and “Pardon is better than repentance.”
A related page on Cities: Izmir Ephesus Biblical Cities Tour From Istanbul.
Which cities stood at Myrina and Gryneion, as told around an Izmir Pergamon biblical cities tour from Istanbul?
Myrina and Gryneion were Aeolian towns on the coast near modern Aliaga. Strabo names Grynium as a town with an altar of Apollo and an ancient oracle. Their story runs around an Izmir Pergamon biblical cities tour from Istanbul, Aliaga district lying off the road north.
Myrina lay on the western coast of Mysia, about forty stadia from Gryneion. The site is believed to lie near Sandarlik, at the mouth of the Koca Cay. Beriki Tepe hill and the river Pytikos mark the old town. Strabo calls it an Aeolian city with a harbour.
The road from Izmir by Menemen to Bergama does not turn aside to this coast. Myrina therefore enters the story as history, told around an Izmir Pergamon biblical cities tour from Istanbul. Alluvium from the Pytikos later buried its harbour. Gryneion lies north-east of Myrina along the shore.
Two founders are named in the sources. One account says a man called Myrinus founded the city before the other Aeolian towns. Another credits Myrina, an Amazon of the old stories. Pliny the Elder gives the town the surname Sebastopolis. Agathias, a poet and historian of the sixth century, was born at Myrina.
Aeolian cities formed a league of twelve, a Dodecapolis, and Myrina and Gryneion both belonged to it. By the eighth century BC the twelve stood independent. Gryneion was independent in early times and later became subject to Myrina. That pairing frames the Aeolian chapter around an Izmir Pergamon biblical cities tour from Istanbul.
Another page that includes Cities is Izmir Sardes Biblical Cities Tour From Istanbul.
Gryneion lay on the Aegean coast very close to modern Yeni Sakran, and its ruins stand near Aliaga. The place held a sanctuary of Apollo with an ancient oracle and a temple of white marble. Strabo calls the shrine costly. Apollo took the surname Gryneus from the city.
Pausanias writes that Gryneum has a splendid grove of Apollo, planted with cultivated trees. Other trees there bear no fruit but please the nose or the eye. He mentions the grove while speaking of linen breastplates dedicated in sanctuaries. That passage in book one joins the story around an Izmir Pergamon biblical cities tour from Istanbul.
Virgil sets the same grove in verse. In the sixth Eclogue, Linus bids the poet Gallus to sing the origin of the Grynean grove. Servius says Gallus imitated a poem by Euphorion of Chalcis on that theme. In book four of the Aeneid, Aeneas says Grynean Apollo and the Lycian oracles told him to seek Italy.
Digging at Gryneion has been brief. French excavators worked there for a matter of days in the late nineteenth century. They unearthed pieces of vases and bronze objects. Road works later exposed a mosaic and a burial area with sarcophagi. Both discoveries belong to the history told around an Izmir Pergamon biblical cities tour from Istanbul.
Farmers of the Kalabassary farm found the necropolis of Myrina, which lies on two hills. The French School at Athens dug there in four seasons in the late nineteenth century. Edmond Pottier and Salomon Reinach led the work. Graves are rectangular pits cut into the limestone tuff of the hills. About 350 graves were well furnished, the excavators counted.
Cities also features in 4 Biblical Cities Tour From Istanbul.
Myrina’s workshops made clay figures in moulds. A seated wet nurse with an infant, 10.2 centimetres high, comes from a two-part mould in beige clay. Monograms on the backs of figures name the makers. Such figures belong to the story around an Izmir Pergamon biblical cities tour from Istanbul, Myrina’s graves being the source.
Who was Arcesilaus of Pitane, as told through an Izmir Pergamon biblical cities tour from Istanbul?
Arcesilaus, son of Seuthes, was a philosopher from Pitane in Aeolis who became head of Plato’s Academy at Athens. Diogenes Laertius reports a tradition that he never wrote a book. Through an Izmir Pergamon biblical cities tour from Istanbul, Pitane appears as his birthplace, near this route.
Diogenes Laertius opens the Life of Arcesilaus with his origin. Apollodorus names the father as Seuthes and the town as Pitane in Aeolis. Arcesilaus was the youngest of four brothers, two by the same father and two by the same mother. He held property in Pitane, and his brother Pylades sent him supplies from it.
Pitane gave Arcesilaus his first teacher, the mathematician Autolycus, a fellow countryman. The text says the pair also travelled to Sardis. That early training began on this coast, a story told through an Izmir Pergamon biblical cities tour from Istanbul. Autolycus himself left two short Greek treatises on spheres and stars, and both survive.
On the Moving Sphere treats points and arcs on a turning sphere. It is believed to be the oldest completely preserved Greek mathematical treatise. On Risings and Settings fills two books and studies how stars rise and set through the year. Arabic translators took up the works in the ninth century, and Latin translators in the twelfth.
Izmir comes up again in Istanbul Biblical Tour From Izmir.
Xanthus, a musician of Athens, taught the young man next. Then Arcesilaus became a pupil of Theophrastus. Lastly, the text says, he crossed over to the Academy and joined Crantor. That road from Pitane to Athens is a story told through an Izmir Pergamon biblical cities tour from Istanbul. Polemo and Crates followed as teachers there, according to scholars.
The Academy began as a place before it was a school. Hekademia, its old name that later became Akademia, was a sacred grove of olive trees dedicated to Athena. It lay outside the walls of Athens, about a kilometre and a half north of the Dipylon gate. Early explanations tied the name to a hero called Akademos.
Arcesilaus became head of the Academy after Crates. Diogenes Laertius says he spent his time wholly there, shunning politics. The text calls his speech axiomatic and concise, and in persuasiveness he had no equal. Pupils imitated his way of speaking. His manner is told through an Izmir Pergamon biblical cities tour from Istanbul. Lacydes later succeeded him as head.
The same Life relays another report, that he was caught revising works of Crantor. His arguments reach readers through other hands. Pythodorus put certain arguments into writing. Diogenes Laertius and Philodemus told his life. Cicero, Sextus Empiricus and Plutarch wrote with sympathy, while Antiochus and Numenius, preserved in Cicero and Eusebius, opposed him.
Diogenes Laertius praises his private generosity and calls him liberal, caring very little for money. Told through an Izmir Pergamon biblical cities tour from Istanbul, Ctesibius appears in a story of kindness. Arcesilaus visited him when he was ill and quietly put a purse under his pillow.
For more on Cities, see Izmir Sardes Biblical Cities Tour From Ankara.
Strabo records a curiosity of Pitane, met through an Izmir Pergamon biblical cities tour from Istanbul. Bricks float on water there, he says, like a certain earth in Tyrrhenia. The earth is lighter than an equal bulk of water. Vitruvius lists Pitane in Asia among the places where finished, dried bricks float, and likens the clay to pumice.
Pitane is also linked to tableware. Eastern Sigillata C, called Candarli ware, is red-slipped pottery tied to workshops at Pitane. Its fabric is compact and light red. Early products have a relatively orange slip, and later ones a darker red. Scholars date the ware from the late first century BC to the fourth century AD.
What stood at Atarneus, as met by an Izmir Pergamon biblical cities tour from Istanbul?
Atarneus was a hill city of Aeolis on the mainland opposite Lesbos, and Hermias, a friend of Aristotle, ruled it. Told by an Izmir Pergamon biblical cities tour from Istanbul, Kale Tepe northeast of Dikili marks that hill.
This route keeps to the road from Izmir to Bergama and back, so Atarneus lies beyond it. The site lies in Dikili, an Aegean district of Izmir Province. Dikili stands about 120 kilometres north of Izmir. Tobacco, cotton, olives and greenhouse farming are the district’s main trades.
Atarna, Atarnea and Aterne are other forms of the name, and Atarneus seems to be the original. The city is seen by an Izmir Pergamon biblical cities tour from Istanbul, Atarneitis being the name of its land. Locally the site is called Atarna. It stood on the road from Adramyttium to the plain of the Caicus.
Herodotus calls Atarneus a district of Mysia that Cyrus the Great gave to the Chians. For a long time no one used barley meal from Atarneus in sacrifices to any god. Sacrificial cakes were not made from its grain, and nothing grown there joined a sacred rite. Exiles from Chios occupied the place at a later time.
A related page on Pergamon: Pergamon Tour From Izmir.
Atarneus flowered in the fourth century BC, a story followed by an Izmir Pergamon biblical cities tour from Istanbul. Eubulus, a banker, held the districts of Atarneus and Assos. Hermias, a Bithynian by origin, had served him as a slave. Hermias later inherited the rule, and Atarneus became his seat of government.
The geographer Strabo tells that Hermias studied in Athens with both Plato and Aristotle. Hermias then sent for Aristotle and Xenocrates and took care of them. Aristotle left Athens with Xenocrates, answering the invitation of his old fellow student. Elsewhere Strabo calls Atarneus the abode of that ruler.
Diogenes Laertius writes that Hermias bound Aristotle to himself by kinship, giving him a daughter or a niece in marriage. Strabo names the bride as the daughter of the brother of Hermias. Her name was Pythias. She enters the story shown by an Izmir Pergamon biblical cities tour from Istanbul, Hermias being host and relative.
Atarneus touched the life of Aristotle long before his stay. Proxenus of Atarneus became his guardian while he was still young. Diogenes Laertius says Aristotle later went to Hermias and stayed with him three years. Those links are traced by an Izmir Pergamon biblical cities tour from Istanbul, Proxenus being the earliest of them.
More about Cities: Ephesus Pergamum Biblical Cities Tour From Izmir.
Aristotle and his colleague Theophrastus did extensive research in botany and marine biology on this coast. They later continued it on the nearby island of Lesbos. There Aristotle spent two years observing and describing the zoology of the island and the surrounding seas. His History of Animals draws on his own observation and on accounts from beekeepers, fishermen and travellers.
Aristotle honoured his host in verse. Diogenes Laertius gives the text of a hymn Aristotle composed to Hermias, which opens with an address to virtue. He also calls it a paean in honour of his host. The poem is known as the Hymn to Virtue. The same author records the inscription Aristotle wrote for a statue of Hermias at Delphi.
Atarneus was deserted in the first century BC, and Pliny the Elder mentions it as no longer a city. Pine forests and a crater lake at Merdivenli village belong to Dikili. They lie beyond the road taken by an Izmir Pergamon biblical cities tour from Istanbul. Karaosmanoglu, a family linked to the name of Dikili, grew seedlings called dikmelik.