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Sunday, August 9, 2009

Aphrodisias

As I wrote before, we stopped at the ancient city of Aphrodisias on the way to Kusadasi. It was a tour we were planning since winter.


In Turkey, Ephesus is the most well known and most visited ancient city. However its rival Aphrodisias is a rather recent phenomena. As it is not easily reachable as Ephesus, its not on the list of many travellers.


Well, to tell you the difference between two cities, one of my guidebook gives a very nice example. 'Aphrodisias is like Florence where Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raffaello worked while Ephesus was like New York where Wall Street, Manhattan and World Bank located.'






So Aphrodisias is the city of artists, and you are realizing this when you enter the city and saw the beautiful theatre masks on the way. It's museum considered as one of the best statue museum from the Roman World.








Julius Caesar was a devotee of Venus and favored this city and known to be visited here, and the emperor Augustus granted it the high privileges of autonomy and tax-free status, declaring Aphrodisias "the one city from all of Asia that I have selected to be my own." So even at that time it was a pretty special city.
But for me the biggest surprise was its huge stadium made for 30.000 people. It's said to be the best preserved stadium of the Mediterranean region.









It was a very hot day and after a while I quit and sat on a stadium bench for a little time to meditate and enjoy the magnificent structure.. It was so quiet and very easy to imagine hearing the sounds of the races and games held here and the cheers of the thousands of people coming from thousands of years ago. It was a pretty special moment.

14 comments:

  1. That is one great city to go around, love the ruins and the showmanship of the artists here. You have a great place. Thanks for the visit turqoise and have a great weekend!

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  2. Amazing. I love the history lesson as well as your photos. I would love to sit in that colossal stadium and imagine hearing the roar of the crowd all those thousands of years ago. The ruins are well preserved. Oh, someday, I hope to visit some of the fantastic places you are visiting!

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  3. wonderful photos! Thank you for the tour!

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  4. Thanks to this post, Aphrodisias will certainly be at the top of my list when I visit that region (no exact plans, but eventually!). The photos are stunning...look at all those ruins. They seem to be in really good condition.

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  5. Muy buen reportaje este de los resto de estas Ciudades del pasado Saludos

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  6. Oh, it's so beautiful! Wouldn't you love to be able to travel back in time long enough to see Aphrodisias in it's time?

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  7. What a wonderful tour! Thanks for letting us tag along. Your photos are of incredible things!

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  8. It is a beautiful city and I love getting to see one awesome photo of it after another! Thank you for taking us along!

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  9. Amazing places.
    I too feel that connection with the people who went before, when I do archaeology work. Glad you got to sit and commune with them.

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  10. This is amazing!!! I love this photos ohh you are so lucky!!!!!!

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  11. Wow, these are really great pics.

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  12. I have seen these kinda stuff only in Hollywood movies

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  13. Wow. I bet that was a special moment in that stadium. Our football team, the Dallas Cowboys, just built a new mamouth stadium. I bet it won't last 40 years much less thousands!
    xxx kim

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