From Pamukkale, Friday

The remarkable change that we observed in Ankara, Capadoccia and Istanbul was also evident in the south west of Turkey.

Perhaps the most obvious aspect of change concerns infrastructure and housing: there is a lot more of both. Izmir now stretches around the entire bay and inland for miles as offices, industry and homes extend along the beaches and over the hilly hinterland.  

Nowhere was this aspect of change more obvious than in the town of Salihili, a place we inadvertently visited in 1972. In my memo written at the time I said of our visit:

"It was an unscheduled [stop] due to a car breakdown some 50 kilometres east of Izmir.  [It] was somewhat too large to qualify as a village [but too small for a town]  and it had block shaped two or three story buildings.  The one that interested us was the only Inn in town where we stopped for the night.  It was cheap, dirty and squalid.  The mattresses were dirty, lumpy and did not boast of bed covers.  The bathroom was locked; when opened it revealed a casual tenant.  It was, in any case, unusable with the bath plug hole blocked by hair and dirt.  Out side our windows the shrill cry of the muezzin at one was matched by the noise of a blood and thunder Indian-made movie at the other. Jenny Williams swears tha she still bears the scars of bed bugs from the evening.  Terrazzo and heat - no need  for bed covers. It cost us about half a lira."

Now Salihi is a big down equipped with industry (ubiquitous brick factories), shops and extensive housing. We lunched at a newly opened restaurant with an excellent menu, high quality service and air-conditioning.

Another remark in my memmoire also resonates.  In 1972, I wrote  [about Pamukkale] that

"Our fascination with it, probably deprived us of the opportunity to visit the many other places in Turkey that we missed."

We were to make up for the omissions in 2013.

Aphrodisias, Miletus and Kusadasi

We were making up for lost time in Aphrodisias on 7 April with a visit to Aphrodisias on our way to Kusadasi.  This city was built near a marble quarry extensively mined in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Its sculptures were to become famous in the Roman world and were of course laid before us on our visit - both at the extended site of the city and in the museum.

A freed slave of the Emperor Augustus became governor of this city. Apparently he was a good administrator.

Our eyes were agog at the beauty and extensiveness of this site and we wondered why we had not visited it before, either in our two years in Turkey in the early 70s or even later in our 2011 Mediterranean Cruise. In the first instance, the answer lies in the fact that it was not excavated until later in the century so there was not much to see in our earlier stay; and in the second instance it is still outshone by Ephesus so that in the limited time allowed by the Cruise, and our fond memories of many trips to Ephesus meant that we had not taken the opportunity.

The only notes I have taken refer to a classical freshwater well with a basin dug on the side by hand - a practice that continues today; a classical gymnasium with a teaching auditorium and sports arena; a Greek Theatre with Roman additions such as the building of a raised platform for the actors. The Theatre faces East to avoid the wind.

The Temple of Aphrodite is the highlight and we took photographs of this largest temple to this cult with snow covered mountains in the background. The Temple features a features a sculpture of Aphrodite on the back of a wild boar with a fish in her hand.

For a period, the city was known as Stavropoulis or city of crosses arisong from the Christian era circa 4th century AD. The Roman theatre is built against 36 man-made structures to replicate the slope of land used by the Greeks who were less competent in the building of free-standing theatres and thus had to build them into the slope of a hill or mountain. It is said to have sat 30,000 suggesting a population for the city in the region of 300,000.

I think that Aphrodite competes well with Ephesus in its magnificence.

We drove on from Aphrodite to Miletos which features in a letter from Paul which is said to be sad in tone. It also has a Graeco-Roman theater (that seats 15,000), topped by a Byzantium citadel.