Pergamon โ€” archaeological site
Image by yusufk53 from Pixabay

Pergamon

  • 2 min read
  • 39.117ยฐ N 27.183ยฐ E
  • UNESCO World Heritage

Interesting facts

  • The word parchment derives from Pergamon, a major production centre, though the tale that the city invented it to beat Egypt's papyrus monopoly is untrue.
  • The library of Pergamon is said to have held at least 200,000 scrolls.
  • In Hellenistic times a pressurised lead pipe carried water down across a valley about 200 metres deep and back up to the summit of the citadel.
  • Water reached the citadel from a spring more than 40 kilometres away in the MadradaฤŸ mountains, and the city's pipes delivered roughly 30,000 cubic metres a day.
  • By the middle of the 2nd century AD Pergamon had around 200,000 inhabitants, making it one of the largest cities in Roman Asia.
  • The Book of Revelation praises believers who live where Satan's throne is, and many scholars think this refers to the throne-like Great Altar.
  • The altar's Gigantomachy frieze, 2.3 metres high, is the second-longest frieze to survive from antiquity after the Parthenon frieze.
  • The altar's inner frieze shows Telephus, the city's legendary founder, being suckled by a lioness, while Rome's Romulus was nursed only by a wolf.
  • After 1945 the altar's reliefs were taken to Leningrad by the Red Army and kept in the Hermitage until their return to Berlin in 1959.
  • In the 16th century Sultan Murad III had two huge alabaster urns from Pergamon brought to Istanbul and placed on either side of the nave of Hagia Sophia.

Why it is worth it

Few ancient cities make such a statement with their setting. Pergamon was built on a steep andesite hill rising to about 335 metres above the Caicus plain, and its rulers terraced the slopes so that temples, palaces and public buildings climbed the rock in tiers. At the top sits one of the steepest theatres of the ancient world: some 78 rows of seats, enough for roughly 10,000 spectators, dropping 36 metres down the hillside towards a long terrace below.

The city reached its height as the capital of the Attalid kings between 281 and 133 BC. Eumenes II and his brother Attalus II rebuilt it on a grand scale, enclosing around 90 hectares within a new wall about 4 km long, and set out to make it a rival to Athens as a centre of learning and art. Its library was second only to Alexandria's in the Greek world. The most celebrated monument was the Great Altar, whose base measured roughly 36 by 33 metres and carried a 113-metre frieze of gods battling giants; its foundations remain on the summit, while the sculptures were taken to Berlin after Carl Humann's excavations of 1878โ€“1886 and now stand in the Pergamon Museum. When Attalus III died without an heir in 133 BC he left the kingdom to Rome, and under Trajan and Hadrian a Corinthian temple to Trajan and Zeus Philios was raised on the highest point of the acropolis.

Below the hill lie two more places of note. The Asclepieion was a healing sanctuary where the physician Galen, born in Pergamon, received his early training. The Red Basilica, a huge Roman-era temple to the Egyptian gods Isis and Serapis, stands in the modern town about a kilometre south of the acropolis. Pergamon is also named in the Book of Revelation as one of the seven churches of Asia. The ancient city and its surrounding landscape were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2014. Today the ruins overlook Bergama, a market town that grew up on the lower slopes.

Getting there

The acropolis rises directly above the town of Bergama, about half a kilometre from its centre, and a gondola links a base station in north-eastern Bergama with the upper city. The nearest airport is Balฤฑkesir Koca Seyit Airport (EDO) near Edremit, about 50 km away in a straight line; ฤฐzmir Adnan Menderes Airport (ADB) lies roughly 95 km to the south.

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Turkey 47The Greatest UNESCO-Listed Archaeological Wonders in Turkey 7The Most Remarkable Archaeological Sites in Turkey 11The Greatest Archaeological Wonders in Turkey 15The Most Beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Turkey 16The Most Remarkable Ancient Archaeological Sites 36The Greatest Ancient Archaeological Wonders 52The Most Remarkable Ancient Places 78The Most Remarkable UNESCO-Listed Archaeological Sites 114The Greatest UNESCO-Listed Archaeological Wonders 149The Most Remarkable Archaeological Sites 193The Greatest Archaeological Wonders 306The Most Beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites 557

From the encyclopaedia

Pergamon or Pergamum, also referred to by its modern Greek form Pergamos (ฮ ฮญฯฮณฮฑฮผฮฟฯ‚), was a rich and powerful ancient Greek city in Aeolis. It is located 26 kilometres (16ย mi) from the modern coastline of the Aegean Sea on a promontory on the north side of the river Caicus and northwest of the modern city of Bergama, Turkey.

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