So today we went to Aphrodisias! Longish drive from here, about 2 1/2 hours each way, not so much far as poor roads. They're expanding the highway as there's so much tourist traffic, but the site is inland through mountain farmland, so the construction takes it's time. It's nowhere near as popular a site as Ephesus, but well worth the drive! It's a wonderful find.
Feliz, our new guide (from yesterday's deleted blog), explained that successive civilizations have lived in and around Aphrodisias, from Neolithic, to Roman, early Christian, Byzantine, Ottoman Turk, to nearly present day. A little Turkish village named Geyre sprung up around the ancient city in the 20th century. The village was damaged by an earthquake in 1956 and the government decided to rebuild it 12 km away from the ancient site when the site's significance became apparent.
There's a really cool photography exhibit on site showing the "modern" village juxtaposed with the antiquities... Roman marble columns supporting old tin roofs of tiny houses; old men sitting on a marble bench smoking; an elderly Turkish woman in traditional dress herding up a path by a marble temple column. Really striking images. Photographer's name is Ara Güler. He stumbled upon the village by accident and then sent his photographs to Kenan Erin, an American professor of archaeology at the university of new York. He began excavating in the early 60s and made it his life's work. He is buried at the site, a rare privilege granted by the Turkish government.
(brings new meaning to the term 'bite me')
//OK, so by now it is obvious that this isn't me writing today's blog.// Ed.
Anyway back to Aphrodisias - in it's Roman heyday, about 1st and 2nd century BC I think, it was a thriving city of 100,000 or more people, boasting a large theatre/arena, a parliament, a bath named after emperor Hadrian (your city is important if the emperor lets you name something after him), two agoras (marketplaces), and one mother of a stadium! Holding at least 30,000 people (you read that right - bigger than anything we have in Halifax, that's for sure), and measuring 260m x 60m, it played host to international sports contests. No chariot races were held though, it wasn't a hippodrome. (Overheard the Transat holidays guide telling their group that... not sure what it means.) It is the largest and best preserved antiquity period stadium in Turkey, and 2nd or 3rd largest in the world.
What's especially cool is that it's entirely original - no restoration has taken place.
The smaller arena is a more traditional Greco-roman style, with ionic columns and a "pit"' where animal-related games could be watched from the safety of the elevated seating area. The friezes that would have ringed the stage area are now in the museum.
There was a sculpture school in the city for which it was well-known, and apparently its works can be found throughout the ancient world. This contributed to it's favored status with Rome. And of course the centerpiece of the town was the temple of Aphrodite. It's a regular sized temple (not a colossus like the temple of Apollo at Didyma, or the now lost Temple of Artemis near here), but beautifully built, owing to the the skilled sculptors and the ready availability of marble in the area.
I really enjoyed Aphrodisias, but boy was it another hot day. And though there were relatively few people there as tourist sites go, there were a couple of larger groups we could have done without. Yesterday's nearly deserted visits to Prienne and Miletos were a treat.
That group of Canadians from Transat holidays was pretty funny though. They're on day 16 of an 18 day highlights of Turkey tour. Many of them had clearly reached the end of their "ruins" tether, wearing that haunted 'if it's Tuesday this must be Belgium' look. I think Geno had that look yesterday :-). //sometime a pile of rocks looks like another pile of rocks.// Ed.
After a relatively quick and surprisingly uninspired lunch, we headed back to Selçuk. Geno napped and played Angry Birds; I listened to my book. Before we knew it we were back.
After we said our goodbyes to Feliz, Lisa and I went up to our hotel rooftop for a brew, to photo the storks (the fledglings are getting ready to try flight) and to work on the blog. That's when poor Lisa had a loss of data problem (Note app) on her iPad. Apple makes nice h/w, but their software is primitive, juvenile and just ridiculous. Her example, deleted data, there is no undo. My example. You can't create and import photos into folders of your choice. All 5000 of your images go into a folder called "imported". Brilliant. Come on Steve, even Microsoft allows you to create folders.
Anyway, as you are finding out, tomorrow you will get the prequel to today's blog.
We had dinner today at Wallabies Chin Yu restaurant. Our table was ready and waiting, Jeff, the owner promised that today's dinner would be even better than yesterday. A hard task at hand. His mom, wife and cousin would pull off another spectacular Mediterranean meal. They did. Appetizer (meza), big salad, main courses, drinks, under 50TL. Amazing. We ordered what Jeff suggested, and as yesterday, he said I'll get you a great salad, leave it to me. Yummy.
Tomorrow is a free day. Yesterday we will visit Ephesus and some other amazing sites.
FYI. Land owners generally are nervous around here and other places in Turkey if and when the need to dig in the ground for anything eg. sewage because when you dig around here, you find something, and when you do, the archeologists then want in on the dig and your plans are delayed.
