This is Aphrodisias, named after the goddess Aphroditie

This city was a long 2 hour drive from Selcuk, and as usual, when I arrived there, no one was about. Only one lonely tourist group(Germans again). I again had the whole city to myself, like in so many other ancient cities I visited. (I went in late March, early April, before the real tourist season begins.)I thought of it as a city of marble, a really beautiful place set in a pretty valley, with snowy mountains in the distance.






Theatre

There were so many theatre's I saw in these ancient cities, I lost track of them all. Every city had one. The acoustics were always perfect in them, you could here someone speaking from way up top. They didn't always do the classics in them either, some were more like burlesque shows, with a rather drunk audience on hand(at least in Roman times)


The Stadium at Aphrodisias


This place I approached from below, not knowing what I would see, then this. Perfectly intact, looking like they had a track meet there not long ago. They also had festivals in here, not just sporting events.


This is Priene


This city, was not touched by the Romans, it is thoroughly Greek. I don't have many photo's of this place, I think I was too stunned by it to take many photo's.It was located, like a lot of these old cities, up on a hillside, up against a mountain. This city had a small theatre, or Odeon, intact with marble seats for the dignitaries with their names engraved on them still there.I was alone there, and thought of the oldness of the place, and with the wind howling through the empty stage column's, I could feel something, a presence of a people long gone. It was very strange, I felt sad for them. Home Page