Ancient Pergamon Part 3 – The Red Hall/Basilica

As we walked down from the Acropolis along the ancient road through the lower city the Kızıl Avlu (Red Hall or Red Basilica), which straddles the Bergama Çayi (the ancient Selinos stream), stood out clearly.

Old Greek houses

Around it the narrow, cobbled alleys of Bergama’s old town run steeply down towards the river, providing housing and an appropriate location for the city’s antiques and carpet shops.

The Kızıl Avlu is an imposing red brick building that dates from the 2^nd century AD. It was originally an enormous temple to the Egyptian gods Serapis, Harpokrates and Isis measuring about 265m by 100m but much of the site is now buried underneath the houses that surround the basilica. In Byzantine times, the main hall of the temple was converted to a Christian basilica.

Remains of the main hall. The rotunda are to the left and right of the picture    

When we visited, the remains of the temple (2 large rotunda and the ruins of the hall) were undergoing restoration so we could only go into one of the rotunda and walk around the outside of the other buildings.  Originally, each of the rotunda had stood on the eastern side of a square colonnaded courtyard (one on either side of the main hall), in which the galleries were supported by huge statues depicting Egyptian gods rather than columns.

A reconstructed statue now stands between the south rotunda and the Red Hall. As the reconstruction suggests, the building was formally faced with marble inside and out but the marble has mostly been long-since removed and only remains in some of the floor paving. Two underground tunnels carried river water beneath the building’s foundations.

Unfortunately, due to the renovation works we were unable to go into the remains of the Red Hall. At the eastern end of the building is a podium for a huge cult statue. Apparently, still visible in the base of the podium is hole through which a priest could enter the enormous statue to make it ‘speak’.

In the grounds just outside the Kızıl Avlu, we stopped for a picnic lunch and a short breather before walking onwards through the maze of modern Bergama, to find the Asklepion (the ‘health spa’) of ancient Pergamon.

Ayvalik, Turkey