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Published: February 25th 2009
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April 13 - 14, 2008
Pammukale, Turkey
We were picked up this morning, by our guide for the day, for our visits to Hieropolis, Pamukkale and the ancient city of Aphrodisias.
The sites of the city of Hieropolis and the Hot springs and mineral baths of Pamukkale are actually one very large site that includes a very large ancient city and the old and new mineral baths of Pamukalle. The city of Hieropolis was a very important site and has everything a major city would have wanted. Shopping centers, Roman Baths, Stadium, Theatre etc. There is also a very large cemetery here as this place was known as “THE” place to die as you got a direct ticket to a better place if you died here. Many of the graves include very large, and very fancy, above ground tombs.
The old mineral baths at Pamukkale are completely remodeled to take advantage of the tourists that come here to soak up the apparently magical powers of these mineral waters. You can cure almost any disease or affliction here just by having a bath !!! Sounds too good to be true !!
The most famous part of Pamukkale
is the “Cotton Mountains”, white formations created by thousands of years of deposits of calcium and other minerals from the water as it flowed into the valley. This is really a beautiful sight and probably the most important “Kodak Moment” in Turkey. We enjoyed a very good walk through the large park created around the site.
Our day continued to the famous ancient city of Aphrodisias, a 2 hour drive through the mountains. I inquired if they had aphrodisiacs here but they told me the Turks didn’t need them as olives, tomatoes and almost everything else they eat were aphrodisiacs !!!
This is a very beautiful site and has been under reconstruction for many years. The history here is long and interesting with a lot of Roman influence. You could spend days here if you were interested in seeing everything. This is the home of the largest, and very impressive, Olympic style stadium with a race track over 200 meters long. An interesting part of this site are the Backgammon ( and other ) games carved into the marble seats that were used to occupy the spectators while they waited to see the sporting events. There is also a
very large Roman Bath and a large theater for the “more interesting” gladiator sports. There was a very important sculptural school here and there are hundreds of examples of marble work. Obviously this was a very important place in its day and well worth the drive from Denizli.
The site includes a very nice museum that is now the home to many of the statues, carvings and sarcophagi that were found here. All in all a very nice site and one of the best of the many ancient cities we have visited.
We returned to Denizli and a trip to the airport for our evening flight to Istanbul and our very early morning connection to Kiev, Ukraine via Budapest.
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