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Published: July 19th 2011
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We’ve had another day visiting building rubble. We visited the PMD ruins, properly known as Priene, Miletus and Didyma. These were 3 large cities close to Ephesus that existed at the same time as Ephesus. However, unlike Ephesus they don’t get much tourist traffic and so it is possible to have a reasonable wander around them without tripping over other people. They haven’t been excavated to the same extent as Ephesus and I think that the amount we were quoted was something like 2%.
The first stop was at Priene which lies partly up a fairly steep and craggy hill. The main features of interest at Priene are the Temple of Athena and a theatre. The Temple of Athena sits in a position on the hill with good views out over the surrounding plain. There are 5 pillars standing but these were re-erected in 1995. Apparently prior to that the locals had re-erected some of the pillars but they had put them together incorrectly. The ground around the temple is littered with the remains of the other pillars and it is easy to see that they have holes in them which used to hold metal dowels that held the
Pillars from the Temple of Athena lying around at Priene
The view is over the silted up delta of the river and towards the Aegean Sea. pillars together. I heard somebody at another set of ruins describe them as early IKEA. The theatre was relatively small compared to others that we’ve seen but some of the seating used by city’s hoi-polloi was still in place.
The next stop was Miletus which was a port city with a couple of harbours. Like Ephesus it’s now inland, the port here also silting up. The sites that we saw at Miletus were the Roman bath house and the theatre. Both of these were huge. I don’t think that the theatre was as big as the one at Hierapolis (Pamukkale) but it had huge vaulted entrances that were original.
Our final stop was at Didyma. This was quite a few kilometres from the 2 other sites and involved a drive along the beachfront. This wasn’t a particularly attractive beach but there were still plenty of holiday makers getting a dose of sunburn and a tacky fun park for the kids. The pile of rubble at Miletus was actually the remains of a Temple of Apollo. I thought that this was the best part of the tour. The temple had been huge in that it used to have 122
pillars. One of the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World was the Temple of Artemis which is/was here in Selçuk. That contained 127 pillars in its day although only one remains. Thus, Didyma was the 2nd largest temple in the world. There are 3 pillars currently standing but there is also a large amount of the remainder of the temple still standing. Our guide told us that the 3 pillars were original but our guide book says they’ve been reconstructed.
That’s the end of ruins for this trip. We have a 7 hour bus trip and a ferry trip tomorrow and we won’t arrive at our destination until 10:00 pm or so.
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