Today we're back to early starts and visiting piles of old stones. We had about 2 hr 15 min journey to the first sight and en route passed these trains which as you can see look very clean and modern. Turkey has rather surprised me with it's impressive infrastructure; roads are wide and well maintained, there is lots of building work going on and wherever we've been has an air of prosperity around - despite what Göksel says about people being poorer than ever.
At our obligatory morning loo stop Aziz (in shirt on RHS) had the bus washed as he did most mornings.
Except the washer never does it to his satisfaction so he usually takes over.
A couple of views through the now sparkling clean windows.
First up was a visit to ancient Aphrodisias which was founded as a city state in the
early 100+ BC and as you can guess from its name the Cult of Aphrodite was most
important. Its close proximity to marble quarries led to the city becoming an outstanding high-quality production centre for
marble sculpture and its sculptors were famous throughout the Roman Empire.
Another key aspect of Aphrodisias was its
cosmopolitan social structure (Greek, Roman, Carian, pagan, Jewish, Christian)
that is abundantly articulated in the site’s 2,000 surviving inscriptions.
The city has many examples of mask and garland friezes, consisting of
heads of gods or theatrical masks between hanging garlands of leaves, fruit and
flowers. They would have originally been in a single line near the top of a building, but here they've been collected together presumably for conservation.
Thought possibly to be Hadrian who visited
Aphrodisias on one of his journeys to the Greek East.
This is the Sebasteion (Greek) or Augusteum (Latin) dedicated to the
goddess Aphrodite and to the ruling imperial family. So in plain English, a Temple.
Once again we more or less had the place to ourselves, apart from a little Jack Russell type dog which followed us around and appeared to be listening intently to Göksel's explanations.
The Stadium is considered to be the largest and best preserved structure of its kind in the Mediterranean. Measuring approx. 270m x 60m, with 30 rows of seats on each side and around each end, it would have had a maximum capacity for around 30,000 spectators.
The Theatre which, according to an inscription
on its wall, was originally built by Ioulos Zoilos, a slave freed by Octavian who became a benefactor of the city, in the first century BC. If
you look closely, the seating area (30,000 cap) is slightly larger than a
perfect semicircle which was characteristic of Greek, as opposed to Roman,
theatres. The brown semicircle is where the orchestra (literally “dancing space”) was, although it was
remodelled during the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161–180 AD) and turned into a
venue for animal and gladiatorial contests, hence the high wall around it.
A better example of where the frieze would be.
There is a legend surrounding this which says that an oracle told the founder of Aphrodisias that he should build his new city where an eagle drops a hare from the sky.
The Stadium from different angles.
This literally is a pile of old stones.
Hadrian's Baths - the city's council had the baths constructed as a memorial of
his visit.
This is the Bouleuterion (council house) or Odeon which consisted of a semicircular auditorium fronted by a shallow
stage structure about 46m wide. Seating capacity about 1,750.
Unfortunately I can't remember if these feet had special meaning or were purely ornamental.
The next batch are all views of the Temple of Aphrodite, I think.
The sky really was this amazing colour.
Rather reminds me of a dead Candelabra cactus.
As we were walking along one of the group spotted this Praying Mantis on the stones in front of us.
I must confess though it wasn't until I downloaded the images that I noticed the insect.
Hopefully he/she enjoyed their lunch.
Heading back towards the exit we had time to walk down the steep steps into the stadium and it really was huge.
Two of our group measuring the seats and trying to decide how big people's bottoms were back in Roman times.
Walking along I suddenly looked down and noticed this fossil which was presumably some kind of shell from the time when the sea was close by.
The Tetraplyon, or monumental gateway, built ca. AD 200.
Hundreds of complete and fragmentary sarcophagi have been found at Aphrodisias, all of which were carved in the local marble and were intended for local use.
Well considering I don't like piles of old stones, I certainly took a lot of photos.
We stopped for lunch at a lovely roadside restaurant, which was obviously the only one for miles around and very attuned to milking the tourists. The lentil soup we had was very good, and the freshly cooked bread absolutely delicious - but wow was it expensive.
We all knew these were peppers hanging up to dry.
There was a lovely little cabaret as we lunched.
