Pergamon Audio Guide

Pergamon: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to Pergamon

   Welcome to Pergamon, the ancient city that gives modern Bergama its character. You are in Turkey's Aegean region, in the province of İzmir. This guide tells the story of Pergamon as a whole: the ancient city, its famous hilltop acropolis, and the wider cultural landscape around the town. It does not describe one single monument or a spot-by-spot route. Pergamon was the capital of the Attalid dynasty and a major cultural, scientific and political center of the Hellenistic world. Later it became the capital of the Roman province of Asia. Its remains are inscribed on the World Heritage List as Pergamon and its Multi-Layered Cultural Landscape, an inscription dating from 2014. The phrase multi-layered matters here. People never stopped living at Pergamon. Hellenistic kings, Roman officials, Byzantine townspeople and Ottoman builders each left their mark, and the acropolis still crowns the slopes above the town that grew up below it. Over the next few minutes we will look at how the city began, how its kings shaped the hilltop, and how later centuries added their own chapters.

2. 02

   Kings, Heroes and a Hill

   Who founded Pergamon? The ancient world offered more than one answer. The traveler and writer Pausanias says the city was founded by a hero named Pergamos. Another tradition credits Telephos, a son of Herakles. Both are best enjoyed as legend, the kind of origin story a proud city likes to tell about itself. The earliest firm historical mention comes from Xenophon, a student of Socrates, who wrote about the place around 400 to 399 BCE. Archaeological work has traced human presence on this hill back to the Early Bronze Age, though who lived here then is not known. One idea is that the area was a route for nomadic peoples passing through. The city's great moment came with the Attalid dynasty. Pergamon was established as their capital in the third century BCE, and it grew into a hub of culture, science and politics, set where Europe and the Middle East meet. Two kings stand out in the story of the hilltop: Attalos the First, who reigned from 241 to 197 BCE, and Eumenes the Second, who reigned from 197 to 159 BCE. Eumenes took the Athenian Acropolis as his model, and he wanted Pergamon to be counted among the most beautiful cities of the Greek world.

3. 03

   A City Built Like a Stage Set

   Look at how the acropolis was designed and you will see why the city impressed the ancient world. Its buildings were arranged on terraces that rise in a half circle, one above another, so that the whole city unfolded like a great architectural ensemble. Scholars have compared this arrangement with the citadel of Hattusa in central Anatolia and with Troy in its sixth phase. All three put their buildings on stacked terraces, which suggests Pergamon drew on a deep Anatolian tradition. The theater was the most dramatic part of this composition. The Hellenistic world's ideas and achievements were meant to be declared from it to everyone who watched. The acropolis also held the Great Altar of Zeus. It is celebrated for its dramatic high-relief friezes showing the Gigantomachy, the epic battle between gods and giants. It is often counted among the masterpieces of Hellenistic art because of its scale and the sense of movement in its sculpture. Then there is the Heroon, a colonnaded building made of andesite and dated to the Hellenistic period. It was probably dedicated to the worship of the kings Attalos the First and Eumenes the Second. Its Roman-era marble alterations have not survived.

4. 04

   Rome, Byzantium and the Ottomans

   When Pergamon became the capital of the Roman province of Asia, it gained fame for its Asklepieion, a healing sanctuary often described as a sanatorium. The World Heritage inscription singles out the Serapis Temple and Sanctuary, the Asklepieion, the water supply system and the amphitheater. Together they show how important the Roman period was in Anatolia. One striking Roman monument is the great basilica known as the Red Basilica. Two circular towers flank it, and one of them served as a prison in Ottoman times. The Selinus River flows through tunnels beneath the building, an impressive piece of Roman engineering. The site's religious use passed from Roman paganism to Christianity and Byzantine worship, and later to Ottoman-era mosques. The pattern continues across the whole landscape. The acropolis remained the crown of the city, while in the Byzantine and Ottoman periods the town spread down the lower slopes. After the Ottomans arrived in the fourteenth century, they built mosques, baths and markets over and among the older structures. That is why Pergamon is now read as a record of continuous habitation, with continuities, transformations and losses all visible in the town's form.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off

   Pergamon is a story told in layers, and the best way to appreciate it is to keep asking which era you are looking at. Start with the acropolis above the town, then turn your eyes to the lower slopes, where Byzantine and Ottoman life took over the city's daily business. The hilltop and the modern town are still part of one landscape. If you want a place to begin, the Bergama Acropolis archaeological site has its official address on Akropol Road in the Kurtuluş neighborhood of Bergama. Elsewhere in the cultural landscape you can find the Asklepieion and the Red Basilica, each with a different story. Notice how the terraces step upward, how the theater faces its audience, and how later builders worked around older stones. Each detail raises its own question about who built it, who changed it, and why it survived. Pergamon rewards the visitor who keeps looking.