View across the Agora, looking up to the city's ancient citadel atop Panos Hill, now Kadifekale.

Pergamon • Day 2

Türkiye

September 24, 2023

Funicular ride to Pergamon’s Acropolis, strolling around what remains of wonderful ancient monuments, making a wish, then walking the ancient way down to the foot of the high hill to visit other sites in Bergama.

I am not going to walk over two kilometers down a busy commercial road to get to the foot of the steep hill on which Pergamon sits, then walk up the ancient road to the top. Not on a cool day, and absolutely not on a warm sunny day like today. I’m going to do what guide Timucin recommended: take the funicular to the top, then walk down the ancient road.

I jumped into a taxi and directed the driver to the funicular’s ground station.  So early in the morning was I that I had to wait a short while for the funicular to start up, to be the first ride of the day. The cabins are the same as those you find in ski resorts, so it was both fun and quite odd to smoothly glide over sun-warmed stones and rocks, dusty paths and yellowed grass, with an occasional glimpse of ancient brick and stonework as the funicular wound the chain of cabins up to the top station. I almost reached out for my skis as I hopped off!

The Acropolis of Pergamon

Obligatory entrance ticket bought at the entrance booth, I stepped into Pergamon’s high acropolis, much longer than it is wide, a slender teardrop of a platform, the sharp end being where the funicular came up and the rounder on the far side, with its panoramic views of the winding river far below. The sides of the acropolis are so steep that terraces had to be cut into them to make the complex workable. This high ridge is where Pergamon started, some 2500 years ago. As it grew people built their many houses on terraces that crossed the hillside many time over, right to its foot, whilst the acropolis transformed into a sacred place of temples and shrines. For anyone who has read Lord of the Rings, or seen the movies, Gondor is a good parallel.

My virtual guide Timucin recommended a route around the several structures; I followed it to begin, then deviated. For me the standout moment has to be when, along a path, having taken a couple of photos to my right, I turned back to the path, took literally one step forward, and found myself at the lip of Pergamon’s theater. Cast against a shallow curve in a hill so steep it is almost sheer, this many-rowed theater, capable of seating thousands, is the world’s steepest. Took my breath away.

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The Theater of Pergamon

Very cautiously I walked out into the rows, about two thirds up from the stage far below. Timucin told me to look for the entrance to a small tunnel just above the top row of seats. Sure enough, there it was, like something out of an Indiana Jones movie. I scrambled my way in, looking back to see the vertiginous drop of the theater, then followed the faintest of light to crawl my way up narrow steps cut into the bedrock to the high, stony platform above. The view is amazing – a white marble colonnade to my right, the hulking wreck of a high tower to my left, with Bergama a swathe of houses far, far below. The photos below trace my path.

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The Wishing Well

Between the white columns and the far more modern radio transmitter block behind them, just as Timucin said, I found the magic wishing well, deep and with a column set at its heart. I made a wish and tossed a coin, which of course bounced and slid its off the column’s capital. So I tossed another coin, and it stayed on! Wish granted! 

Walking away, I recalled how, especially in this territory, badly phrased wishes often bring dire consequences: ’attack Persia and you will destroy a kingdom’, the oracle said, and so Croesus, king of Lydia, just next door to Pergamon did just that, only to see his own kingdom destroyed by Persia. Croesus’ story ends in Sardis; for me to visit next time and recount to you.

I decided to go back to the well with a re-formulated wish. Four ill-tossed coins later, I resigned myself to the inevitable consequence inherent in my first wish. No, I’m not telling you what it is.

Trajan's Temple

This is the Traianeum, built and extended over an older sacred precinct and dedicated to Trajan, Imperator of Rome 1900 years ago by his cousin and successor Hadrian. It is sublimely beautiful and delicate, rising above all other buildings on the Acropolis and with a fantastic view from its broad terrace over the valley and lower town below.  This was the time of the five good emperors, the height of the Pax Romana, and a time when many Ionian cities, having been damaged by earthquakes, were granted funds and exemptions to rebuild. Most of what you see in Ionia that still (partially) stands comes from the time of Hadrian, Antoninus and Marcus Aurelius.

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Down the Ancient Road

My walk around the acropolis done, I returned to the entrance gate and asked the ticketeer where I could take the ancient road down to Bergama below. I didn’t quite get the instructions right, but my error led me to the stage level of the theater, so I could look all the way up, and the ruins of some temples set at the same level.
Back to the beginning, but left instead of right this time. The ancient road lay before me, its large, smoothed and grooved paving stones tracing a long, lightly descending path for me to follow. Really good to do that, for down these slopes lies much of the peoples’ Pergamon, which at one time was so large the town spread onto the plain below.

At one point, just where a small theater and shrine to the ruling dynasty of Pergamon sits to the left of the road, complete with a still running spring of fresh water, I stopped a moment, to sit in the shade of tall trees that crossed the middle of the road, to look at the view down the slope. Sitting on those paving stones in a revery, I had a vision of an grey-haired man with dusty red tunic pulling on the rope bridle of his donkey, that in turn pulled a wooden cart up the hill. Both tired from the climb up, they passed me to my left, neither noticing me.  On the other side of the road, heading downhill away from me and carrying large jugs filled with fresh water from the spring, three young women, dressed in pastel colored robes. What an ageless moment.

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The Red Basilica

Through the Byzantine walls the land flattened, a turnstile gate beckoned; I left Pergamon and returned to Bergama. Zigzagging my way through old alleys I found myself in front of the Red Basilica, a monumental structure typical of the Roman period some 1800 years ago. Once this was part of an immense temple complex dedicated to Egyptian gods. You can see their statues in the open space between the two massive red brick towers that give the place its name. In time it became a Byzantine basilica, before being abandoned. The river was diverted to use its waters in rituals, resulting in one of Rome’s widest bridges – an entire courtyard wide, still standing and used to this day.

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Completely done, I found a taxi and had the driver take me back to my hotel, where I rested my footsore, sun-roasted body in the rooftop swimming pool. Floating in the water I could see, shimmering in the distance, high ridged Pergamon and the paths I had taken. What a day!

One gentleman taking in the late afternoon sun as he sits on the sea breakers fronting Izmir's long promenade.