More cities of the Ionian league (and Magnesia)

Athena temple at Priene

Wow, after this post I should finally be caught up. It's really easy to get behind when computers keep hating your camera and even spontaneously die in the middle of a post. That and I've been visiting ruins like it's my last chance ever, which could in fact be the case - who knows when I'll ever be back here?
Today I visited three sites - Priene, Miletus and Magnesia. I'll try to keep this one short. Priene and Miletus were both cities in the Ionian league I mentioned in the last post. Magnesia, despite being very much in the same area, was not accepted into the league. This was basically because it was settled by the "wrong kind of people".

Miletus

The area is an interesting one - a wide, incredibly flat valley through which the tail end of the river Meander flows (ever wonder where we get the word "meander"? Google image search the river). Two thousand years ago, the whole valley was filled with water - it was part of the Aegean sea. But over hundreds of years it slowly silted up, first turning into boggy swamps then flat ground, literally leaving these cities high and dry. However important they may have been in the day, Priene, Miletus and Magnesia pretty much died out after this. And let's not forget that swamps bring with them mosquitoes which bring with them malaria...

Magnesia

In short, Priene was the best location - it was possibly the best preserved with the most to see, and it's located on a very stunning forested mountainside. Miletus was depressing and a little creepy - just a handful of ruins on a windswept, sandy, deserty hill in a wide, featureless flat plain. Magnesia didn't even have much of a hill.

Ephesus

After Pammukale ıt was off to Sleçuk to visit Ephesus and the Artemis temple.

Gate of Augustus, Ephesus

The restored Facade of the Roman Library of Celsus.
Probably the most famous building in Ephesus.

Ephesus was in it's heyday one of the most important cities in the Mediterranean. In fact, in the first century BC it was, with 250,000 inhabitants, the second largest city in the world. Basically you can split Ephesus' history into ancient Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Turkish. During the Ancient Greek era it was part of what was known as the Ionian league, similar to the Lycian league. Again all the cities in the league were in what is now Turkey, but located along the Aegean coast, in an area then known as Anatolia. In the first century BC it came under Roman rule, and continued on more or less how it was, but obviously with a lot of Roman influence. Then with the split of the Roman empire, the Eastern half, the Byzantine empire, took it over. By the time the Turkish empire took over, it was just a little town, having been devastated by a series of natural disasters. Eventually in the 15th century it was completely abandoned.
Just outside the city was also the famous Temple of Artemis - another of the 7 wonders of the ancient world. This really suffered in its time, being subject to earthquakes, fire and wholesale vandalism. As you might guess, the site looks a lot like that of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. Worse still, the moment you walk into the site, a horde of peddlars come out of the ground and from the sky and try to sell you guidebooks and useless junk. Still, now I've been to 4 of the 7 sites. That's over half!

Temple of Hadrian

This is what's left of the Temple of Artemis.

Mausoleum photos and Pammukale.

Model of what the Mausoleum would have
looked like originally.

This is what it looks like now

Stone formations at Pammukale

Yesterday morning I spent the day having a look at the sights in Pammukale. These consist mainly of the weird stone formations and rock pools from the hot springs, and the Roman cite of Hieropolis. The site ıs really interesting - mineral rich water cascading down the sıde of the hill have created some very unique and interesting formations and rock pools. It looks almost like snow, and there is no way up to Hieropolis without getting your feet wet - the water pours down the path up the mountain like a little river.

Main street of Hieropolis

Hieropolis itself is at this stage, to me, just another ruin. It's mostly Roman, but I believe there was a Greek cıty there originally. I daresay it would have been an impressive city in the day - fountains were built everywhere due to the natural springs.

Xanthos and the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus

Tower tomb at Xanthos

Man, yesterday was huge. I started off by getting up relatively early so I could see Xanthos, another one of the major Lycian cities in the area. It wasn't exactly on my way, but it wasn't too far out either, so I gave it a squizz. Now, the whole Indiana Jones thing was fun for a while, especially where you feel like you're in the middle of nowhere, but Xanthos is a Unesco heritage site and I just expected a little bit more. The theatre and a few of the main buildings were easily accessible, but the Necropolıs requires you to scramble through thick undergrowth. And it's not even wıld-seeming undergrowth, it's more like a garden that needs serıous weeding. And everywhere there was a serious lack of sıgnage. At very least they could have provided a little xeroxed pamphlet explaining some of the important ruins.

Mosaic floor at Xanthos where anybody can step on
and destroy them.

So then after Xanthos I took a pretty major detour. I added about 300 kılometres to my journey for the day, and all so that I could see what is left of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. The name might sound familiar to you, and that's because it was one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world. The Mausoleum, unlike most of the ancient sites I've visited, lies right in the middle of Bodrum, a harbour town on the southwest coast of Turkey. Of course if all the sites were like this one, I wouldn't have had to visit any other city, but annoyingly the people of the ancient world had to build their interesting things all over the place. But more to the point, I had to drive through the centre of thıs annoying, chaotic city. This experience has made me decide to cancel my night in Izmir tomorrow in favour of staying an extra night ın Selçuk.
As I've alluded to, there is little left of the Mausoleum. The Pyramids of Giza are in fact the only wonders still standing. Now, the misleading thing about the Mausoleum is that its name might incline you to think that it was for some dude called Halicarnassus. In fact, that was the name of the city ın the 4th century BC, and ıt was buılt for the kıng Mausolus. So it's actually this tomb that the term Mausoleum comes from.
So I drove an extra 5 hours to spend 45 mınutes looking at a pile of rubble and get annoyed in Turkish traffic. But at least now I've been to the sites of 3 of the 7 wonders of the ancient world. Tomorrow I'm going to make that 4. (No, I'm not makıng a detour to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The 2000 kilometres would be too far out of my way even for me)
P.S. Halfway through uploadıng photos, this computer decided it didn't want to play anymore. I'll post the rest of the photos and what I did today tomorrow.

Photos galore!

First things first, I'll get the buisiness out of the way. (By the way, I'm using a Turkish keyboard, so don't be surprised ıf some weird symbols crop up, lıke an ı wıthout a dot, or an uppercase one WİTH a dotç or occasıonally a ç ınstead of a dotç Yes, the turks have got a thing about dots.)
So, pictures of Fethiye and Pinara: Sorry it took so long. I couldn't get at a computer!

The main temple at Fethiye plus some random
person.

Some more temples at Fethiye

I totally climbed up to all of these like a badass archaeologist.

Pinara - some ruins with the second acropolis in the
background, riddled with tombs

Some more rock tombs at Pınara

View of the Pinara site from its theatre. Most of what you can
see here is strewn with ruins.

Fethiye

First, again no photos. I'm using a lethargic XP laptop, and it's just not worth it. I'll post pretty pictures tomorrow.
Well, this is the first time I think something has gone wrong in my favour. After dilligently getting up at 7 this morning to catch my 9 o'clock ferry to Mamaris in Turkey, I arrived at the port at about quarter past 8 to discover the ferry had already left. Apparently due to heavy sea traffic they decided last night to push it forward, calling up all the people who had booked to let them know. I had booked about 3 or 4 months ago before I had any European phone number. So, after having a quick heart attack, I asked when the next ferry was going. Apparently it was leaving at five that afternoon. However, there was another ferry heading to Fethiye at 8:30. I had originally planned to transfer via bus from Mamaris to Fethiye anyway, so this was superb. And to top it off, I could simply transfer my old ticket straight across. So, I got an earlier ferry to even closer to my destination. Win.
In Fethiye one of the first things I did was to check out the Lycian tombs. I have to admit, I have to defer to Wikipedia for almost everything about them, because it seems ancient sites in Turkey are very impoverished in informational signs. Lycia was an area in Turkey (okay, the area obviously still exists, it's just called something else now) in the southwest. It has a complicated history, and I'm still not entirely sure I understand it's full relationship with the other cultures of the time, but it seems by about the third or second century BC its culture had been largely replaced by the Greek culture. It's from this period and the following Roman period that most of the ruins come. This was immediately apparent when I saw the rock-cut tombs in the cliff above Fethiye. Obviously the Lycian culture of the time wasn't an exact carbon copy of the Greek, because I've never seen these type of tombs in Greece. The architecture of them, however, was very Hellenic. And again, like in Rhodes, there were very few tourists. Also, in addition to the lack of signage, there was also a distinct lack of things like handrails and paths. There was only one wide, concrete set of steps leading up to the biggest and main rock tomb, but the others were accessed by beating my way through scrub and clambering up steep rocks. In short, just the way I like it. In fact, I felt like Indiana Jones (helped by the presence of my Indy purse)
Back at the entrace to the site I saw a poster of an imposing theatre at a place called Pinar. I had that morning picked up my hire car for Turkey, and being on speaking terms with Karen again I plugged her in (get your mind out of the gutter) and looked up the site. It was about 50 kilometres from Fethiye, so away I went.
Driving in Turkey, by the way, hasn't been as bad as I expected. So far. It does feel very foreign, and I sense that there are some unspoken road rules I'm unaware of, but overall it's not much more chaotic than Greece.
The last two or three kilometres, while easy on traffic, almost made me wish I had hired a 4x4. Still I got there will all my hubcaps still on, and I was glad I did. Pinar was supposed to be one of the biggest city in the Lycian league (Lycia was a sort of early Federation with 23 cities). The first thing you notice when you approach the ruined city is the imposing mountain dominating the skyline, honeycombed by scores of rock-cut graves. These, however, were simple rectangular holes unlike the Ionian style tombs in Fethiye. The complex more than sated my Indiana Jones appetite - it was huge, and there was only one other German couple there. To give you an idea of its size, it has two Acropoli - one of them right on top of the mountain with the tombs I just mentioned. And all of it thickly vegetated and strewn with rocks to scramble over. It was here that I wouldn't have minded a little bit more of a setup for tourists. Hunting for paths amongst scrub to find ancient ruins is something I like, but I wouldn't mind knowing what I'm looking at when I get there. The well preserved Theatre had a sign (as if it wasn't obvious what it was), so did the Agora and the Baths, but apart from that there would have been about a dozen sites of strewn rubble around the foundations of walls that I would have liked to know what they were.
Even so, I spent three or four hours scrambling amongst the ruins, imagining I was the first to see them in two thousand years and that at any moment I would have to run away from a giant boulder. I even saw a tortoise. Not quite a snake pit or a room full of giant bugs or even a bunch of skeletons on spikes, but it was something. But after all that I didn't even get to the second Agora on top of the mountain. There were a bunch of Ionian style rock tombs I saw on the other side of the site I wanted to visit as well, but by that stage I was tired, hot, thirsty and poked to bits by spiky bushes. As much as I regretted it I had to go back to Fethiye.

Rhodos (Rhodes if you will) and Pub Challenge 113

This morning I was feeling very grumpy.

Artist's impression of the Colossus
of Rhodos.

More or less where the Colossus of Rhodos
would have stood akimbo.

The plane last night was delayed by an hour, and all the time I had to wait in a tiny departure lounge servicing six gates that any respectable airport would use to service two. I then caught a tiny plane that actually had propellors (I thought they stopped making those in the fifties?). I then had to catch a taxi for five minutes to the hotel and pay the exhorbitant price of fifteen Euros for the privelege. The hotel was kinda shitty - the door to the bathroom opened about 70 degrees due to hitting the toilet, the shower curtain had at some point been removed and never replaced, planes were constantly flying overhead, and overall the room was just a little poxy. This morning I had to wait about half an hour for an overcrowded bus to Rhodos.
In Rhodos I discovered, apart from the pretty medival walls and streets, there is very little to do, and again the Buses decided to hate me, because the only archaeological sites in my Lonely Planet guide didn't have any more buses going to them today. And to top it all off, today is Monday and as such even the museum was closed. So I tramped unhappily up Mandraki harbour to the Venetian fortress. Even most of this was closed for repairs. I tried to get a good shot of the harbour with mixed success - it is apparently the original site of the Colossus of Rhodos. This statue, built entirely of Bronze, apparently stood over thirty metres tall and was apparently a depiction of Helios (though I have heard it being attributed to Apollo as well). It was considered one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, until it collapsed in an earthquake. Now there's nothing left. That didn't help my mood.

Walls of Rhodos

Soon, however, my mood made a change for the better. It started with patting a stray kitten that was probably way too friendly for its own good. After thoroughly washing my hands, I got something to eat and drink, then headed for the tourist information centre. There I picked up a map of Rhodos and discovered there was some ancient Greek ruins I could see after all: the old Acropolis, Stadium and Theatre of Rhodos.

Partially restored ruins of the Zeus temple at Rhodos

These were excavated and restored in the early twentieth century by neither Schliemann or Evans, so it actually looked in part how it may have looked over two thousand years ago. The theatre was mostly new white marble, but the stadium, it seemed, had been pieced together almost exclusively from the original pieces. The temples and sanctuaries on the acropolis weren't quite so well preserved, but no worse than most of the sites I have been to. It seems my not knowing about it beforehand is not entirely due to my own stupidity either, because there were very few tourists. And the best part was, it was completely free!
Then the final thing to make me feel good again, I found an English pub and sat down for a pint of Cider.

Top 3, Rhodos