The tour of ruins continues in Pergamum/Bergama.

From Ayvalic, it was back onto the historical ruins trail! To Pergamum (Bergama) to see the Acropolis, the Asclepion and the Red Basilica. The top two shots here are of the Red Basilica, a temple made in 117A.D in dedication to the Gods of Egypt. They beleive that because it was built facing the West, that it was probably built for the Egyptian god of the Underworld, Serapis. But after some remodelling (and trashing really), it was made into a christian church, and dedicated to the Apolostle John. In early christianity, it was one of the seven churches in Asia Minor address by St John in the Book of Revelation. Really amazing history and quite beautiful. One of the structures is this massive dome, if you can imagine stepping inside a red-brick snow dome thing, about 6 stories high .. thats what this is like, it is EERIE! And inside, there used to be this massive statue which a preist would climb inside of and speak to the congregation from .. as though the statue was speaking. Would have been quite an effect coming from a huge marble statue (about one story high) from inside a huge brick snow dome! The photo I have taken from within the dome doesnt do the height nor the temperature (was very cold inside) nor magnitude of the building any justice. .. oh and the picture completely misses the amazing "KOOO EEEEEE" you can get from inside it!

The next 9 shots are taken from The Acropolis, perched on top of a hill about 300metres high, amazing ruins of an empire from 3rd century b.c. The first 5 shots (starting with the one of me and all the ones of the marble looking pillars) are of the Temple of Trajan, a massive temple built on top of the empire out of marble, it is most impressive! The next 2 shots are of the vertigo inducing theatre, built into the side of the mountain to seat around 10,000 people .. still one of the steepest theatres in the world. Fucking amazing and a bit scary! The next two photos (the photo of me and the one after it of the flat ground with the bricks and the little bits of marble posts, if you count down from the top of the pics, its pictures 10 and 11), are of a massive old library that Eumenis II built and which rivavled the one at Alexandria, the Egyptians werent impressed. Since the people of Pergamum didnt have papyrus like the Egyptians, they came up with parchment .. Ironically, when Pergamum came under Roman rule, Marc Antony gave all of the 200,000 parchments to Cleopatra as a gift .. which unfortunately all disappeared in a fire.

The next 10 photos are from the ruins of the Asclepion .. one of the first known hospital or health/ healing centres known .. although you couldnt be 'dying' or about to have a baby to entre this health facility! The Asclepion was built in 117A.D in devotion to Asclepios, the son of Apollo and the God of Healing. Most of the healing methods were ritualistic in nature, including dream interpretations and steam baths. It also has a theatre built into a small hill, which seats 3500 patients - pales in comparison to the Acropolis theatre. The ruins of the hallways, the tunnels for walk ways into the treatment areas which also channeled the water from the sacred wells all through the site, and the waiting areas for patients are still really well preserved - the sacred fountain still has running water from it .. which I had a little sip of and then read that it was weakly radioactive!! Good. Gorgeous shot of a family of tortoise living in the sacred waters .. two little ones following their mum around! Really cute.

So, continuing on my tour of the ancient world, its off to Ephesus, to see one of the seven wonders of the ancient world The Temple of Artemis.