Selçuk, Türkiye

Another day, another Ancient City. (We have another one tomorrow too).

It’s a four drive from Burdur to Selçuk. Aphrodisias Ancient City is at the midpoint, so made a natural stop. Pamukkale and its famous blue travertine pools is also midway, although separated from Aphrodisias by the Denizli mountains, so we had to choose between them.

Years or decades ago it would have been an easy decision to see Pamukkale. However overtourism and strains on the water supply have degraded the site. So we decided to skip Pamukkale and see Aphrodisias instead.

It was a boring drive from Burdur to Aphrodisias, with long stretches of straight roads. We did see several marble quarries, with large blocks of marble cut out for shipping.

We arrived at the site around 12:30, hoping to have a light lunch. However their snack bar just had tea and coffee and packaged snacks :( So we made do with a cappuccino and a Snickers.

There were three buses in the parking lot when we arrived, and they were all just leaving. Presumably the tours knew that there was no food to be had onsite, and were headed out elsewhere for lunch. The bonus was that we had the site mostly to ourselves.

Aphrodisias is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and is well-marked and well-maintained, as with most UNESCO sites. (The two sites we saw yesterday, Termessos and Sagalassos, are not World Heritage sites, although both are on the Tentative List).

The ticket booth folks gave us a photocopied map of Aphrodisias. The major attractions are laid out in a circuit, which we followed. It was a beautiful day, about 18C with blue skies.

It took us about 90 minutes to see, ending with yet another theatre. I had hoped that there would be good pics of the rest of the site from the top of the theatre, but big trees blocked the view of all the major ruins :(

We had missed Aphrodisias stadium during the circuit. It’s actually off a tangent path, and wasn’t marked on the photocopied map. I could see this being a common oversight. We doubled back to check it out, as we had already missed the stadium at Perge, and plus the one here at Aphrodisias is supposedly the best preserved stadium of the Ancient World.

The Ancient World in archeology refers to the period from about 3000 BC to the fall of the Roman Empire in 476 AD. We had just seen the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens, so I’m not sure how Aphrodisias stadium is considered the best preserved. Citation needed!

Nevertheless, the stadium at Aphrodisias is pretty impressive, one of the highlights of the site. The other highlight for us were the hundreds of marble sarcophagi around the museum. Unfortunately the museum itself was closed for renovations, the Lonely Planet said it’s quite good.

We got back on the road for the two hour drive to Selçuk. This was a much more interesting drive, through the mountains back down to sea level.

Our hotel was expecting us as we arrived. We checked in and carried our luggage up the 3rd floor. We cleaned up and headed out for dinner at a restaurant recommended by the hotel. It had a beautiful view of the setting sun. We had a sundowner on their patio and the went inside for dinner. We each had a lentil soup and split a leg of lamb. It was mmm good.