The impressive remains of this once-splendid city are situated on a high plateau, within Aydin Province. As its name suggests, Aphrodisias was named after Aphrodite, a goddess of nature, love and fertility and was the site of one of her most famous sanctuaries.

Although the history of Aphrodisias stretches farther back in time, it rose to prominence in the first century BC and enjoyed a long period of prosperity. Besides being a significant religious site, it was also a cultural and intellectul center to which students and scholars flocked from all over the ancient Hellenistic world. With an excellent marble supply, perhaps the finest available anywhere, the city became the center of a school of sculpture that flourished for a period of six hundred years. Many of its marvelous works of art are now housed in the local museum.

The Temple of Aphrodite was the focal point of the city in antiquity, as it still is today with its fourteen standing columns. The stadium, located in the northern end of the city, is probably the best preserved structure of this type in the Mediterranean. It could accommodate as many as 30,000 people. The theater, odeon (concert-hall), Bishop’s Palace, Baths of Hadrian are among other ruins.

East of the temple, one of the most attractive landmarks of Aphrodisias is a decorative gateway (in the picture) datable to the middle of the second century. It consisted of four rows of four columns and its main access was from the east, with a front row of spirally-fluted Corinthian columns facing a main north-south street. Its sixteen columns have been repaired and re-erected and upper portions partly replaced.

Pergamon (or Pergamum), once a great center of culture, survives as one of Turkey’s finest archeological sites. It is located 100 km north of Izmir. The city experienced its golden age until the end of the 3rd century AD during Hellenistic and Roman times. In the Acropolis, above the modern town, are the remains of the library, a steep and impressive theatre, the temples of Trajan and Dionysos, the monumental Altar of Zeus, the sanctuary of Demeter, a gymnasium and the Agora. The Asclepion, located to the southwest of the lower city, was a medical center dedicated to the god of health, Asclepios. Patients were treated with water and mud baths, with massages and with medicinal herbs. The center also had a small theather, a library, a sacred fountain, temples as well as two meeting rooms and lavatories for women and for men.

The site of Pergamon was first excavated by the German archaeologists between 1878 and 1886. It was during this time that the magnificient reliefs of the Altar of Zeus were discovered and carried to Berlin and now displayed in Berlin Museum.

Ancient authors tell us that the Pergamon library at one time contained 200 000 volumes. Mark Anthony carted them off to Egypt as a gift for Cleopatra, to replace the ones that had been lost when the Alexandrian library was burned during Caesar’s campaign. In the middle of the library’s main reading room is the podium on which there stood at one time the 3.5 meter high statue of Athena that is now in the Berlin Museum.