Ancient Pergamon Part 1

Our prime reason for visiting Ayvalık, and for checking out of Turkey from this port, was to go to ancient Pergamon. Having spent a night at anchor in a peaceful bay on the edge of Ayvalık Limanı we had moved to an anchorage just outside the town and the marina so that we would not have such a long dinghy trip ashore for what needed to be a very early start from BV. Ancient Pergamon is now spread over 2 main sites outside the town of Bergama, a 60+km bus ride from Ayvalık. To do justice to the ruins we needed to catch the 0815 dolmuş south.

After a near 2 hour ride in a small coach (not a minibus dolmuş this time), primarily along dual carriageway main roads but occasionally on tiny, pot-holed village streets, we reached Bergama. The dolmuş ride in cost TL20 for the 2 of us (about £5!) the taxi ride to the Acropolis cost the same but it saved us getting lost on a 7km walk, steeply uphill, in the rain. Rain! What’s that all about?! The light rain and clouds had greeted us as we got up in the morning and remained with us until we got back to Ayvalık.

The Acropolis at Pergamon sits 300m (1000ft) above modern Bergama and its plain and commands a fantastic view across the landscape. It is easy to see how the great Hellenistic city dominated the region and rivalled other centres such as Ephesus.

We started by taking what we thought was a short detour a little down from the main entrance. This brought us out on the plateau of the Temple of Zeus, of which little remains other than the stepped base of the altar. The main body of the highly ornamented altar now sits in Berlin’s Pergamon Museum – the first archaeolgical team to work on the site was led by a German, Carl Humann.

We continued for a short while at this level and came out, via a very narrow path at the precipitous theatre. Having realised that we would be better climbing up the road to the top of the site first, and then walking down through it, we retraced our steps and to follow the ancient way up through the city to the top levels. Much of the site is still very ruined (and when we visited, very cloudy too) though there are a good number of information boards to help to orient visitors. We walked through the sparse remains of the Temple of Athena and then through the famous library, which once housed 200,000 volumes.

Following a trail of large blue painted dots (which seemed to mark a former tourist route through the ruins) we found ourselves on a high terrace outside the city walls but in a seemingly impregnable location. Here there were the remains of the city’s arsenal and from here a sign directed our gaze down towards the valley to the north where we could see the remains of an aquaduct. The information board told us that water was brought to the city from the Madaras Dag mountains some 45km away. The board showed the route (in elevation) of the three channel lead and terracota pipeline (comprising 240,000 segments!) and said that the lead sections were capable of withstanding water pressures of up to 20atm to get the water over the intervening hills!

We continued around the hill at this level and entered the Temple of Trajan from the foundations. The Temple sits right at the top of the hill but the ground here slopes very steeply which, using Greek construction techniques, would have made it impossible to build a temple of the size built by the Romans. To terrace a hillside, the Greeks merely dug away at the soil and rock behind and above the desired construction site and then piled this out and up below where the building was to be located. The disadvantage of this, however, is that any construction on a terrace formed in this way can weigh no more than the weight of soil and rock contained within the terrace, or the whole thing will slide downhill. The Romans overcame this problem by building buttresses and underpinning structures to support the terrace platform on which the building (in this case a temple) was constructed.

Even today, the temple is impressively large and the view it commands is fabulous. In its day, the sight of it from afar must have been quite awe-inspiring.

German archaeologists have re-erected many of the temple’s columns (in some cases having reconstructed the columns first) as well as most of the stoa which surrounded the temple on 3 sides.

The temple would have been decorated with statues as well as with the relief carvings at the base of the columns and on the temple pediments; all in marble, most of which has long since gone.

Down from the temple of Trajan is the theatre and we were pleased to have approached it from the top this time. In its day, the entrance would have been from below, from the level of the orchestra, but by approaching it from the theatre we experienced the full glory of the view from the top of the 80 tiers of seating.

It is probably the steepest inclined theatre seating that we have seen and it was almost dizzying to look down onto the orchestra and to the terrace where the temporary scenery would have been. To the right are the remains of the Temple of Dionysus and the temple’s location, as well as the topography, meant that there was no permanent stage. The square holes into which the stakes holding the temporary scenery were located can still be clearly seen today.

Temple of Dionysus

Having climbed carefully down the steps of the theatre to the orchestra, we strolled along the terrace to the Temple of Dionysus and then to the upper agora, which is just below the level at which the Temple to Zeus sat. Here we found the start of the ancient paved road which led into the lower city so we decided to follow it to see what else remained of ancient Pergamon.

Ayvalik, Turkey