Ancient Assos

It is a long pull from Berham Kale harbour to the top of the volcanic plug on which sits the Acropolis, and Temple of Artemis, of ancient Assos. Even only halfway up the hill from the harbour there is a spectacular view, just the sort of view, in fact, that the ancient Greeks liked to have from their theatres. Indeed, so good is the view at this point, that the ancient Greeks built the city’s theatre in a bowl in the hill at this point, the lowest point of the city, and this is where we entered Assos’ ruins. By now we have seen plenty of impressive theatres but this one still struck us as a stunning location.

From the gate where we entered the site, the gravel path quickly joined an ancient paved road, complete with drainage channel, which we followed to the edge of the theatre.

An archaeological team has carried out a lot of reconstruction work here (and, yes, a lot of concrete has been used) but it looks surprisingly in-keeping, perhaps because the local rock is primarily a conglomerate. The tunnels into the theatre’s auditorium are now shut off but a sign at the entrance to the more easterly one said that St Paul had followed this road to the port when he was en route to Rome. As ever, the theatre’s acoustics are wonderful and the view across to Lesvos from the top rows of the auditorium is fantastic.

Looking higher, we could see the columns at the edge of the agora and above that the city walls which seemed impressively large even at some distance. There is no clear path from the theatre up to the agora, though there would have been in ancient times (presumably St Paul would have walked it), so we scrambled up the most direct route and arrived on the next plateau.

Agora

The view from the agora, like that from the theatre, is spectacular.

Agora

The remains of the agora are clearly laid out. The buildings on the north side were 2-storey and niches in the back wall into which floor/ceiling joists would have been placed can still be seen. The square bouleuterion (unlike others we have seen this one had had wooden seating inside) is to the east of the agora, between it and the residential area. Much of the agora’s paved courtyard area has been uncovered and is well preserved and there are clear paved paths around much of the site at this level.

There are vast numbers of well-preserved remains around the site, from parts of houses and (more recent) churches to cisterns and sewage/drainage tunnels.

Some of the current inhabitants

Further on we came to the western necropolis. There had been a necropolis on both the western and the eastern sides of the city but only the one on the west has been excavated. The necropolis extends on either side of an impressive paved road which leads to the city’s western entrance. The site was used for burial from the 7^th century BC to the Byzantine era. The early sacrophagi (5^th century BC) are plain and unadorned by any type of carving. During Roman times it became fashionable to decorate them and carve the name of the deceased on the outside and to group  them into family plots. Later still, ornate family tombs were constructed.

We continued our scramble up the site and stopped to marvel at the size of the Hellenistic city walls which still reach about 15m high in places. They are, of course, commensurately thick …… and all these built, in dressed stone, without recourse to modern-day machinery!

Western gate

Temple of Artemis

At the top of the city, dominating the straits across to Lesvos and the fertile hinterland, was the Temple of Artemis. There is now an excellent model showing what the temple would have looked like but it is still easy to get a good impression from the reconstructed remains at the site.

In the late Byzantine era, the acropolis was fortified so that it could be used as a place of refuge and 4 towers, one at each corner of the temple plateau, and some additional defensive walls were built. From this vantage point we looked down onto the present day village and its rural neighbourhood before strolling down the hill to to buy bread and then return to BV.

Behram Kale, Turkey