Pergamon (Bergama): City of Kings
A curated tour of Pergamon's most extraordinary ancient sites — a UNESCO World Heritage city in western Turkey that was once the glittering capital of the Attalid Kingdom (281–133 BC), one of the greatest centres of Hellenistic civilisation, and home to monuments that rival those of Athens and Rome.
Trip Stops
- 1
The ideal starting point — a well-curated archaeological museum opened in 1936 housing sculptures, inscriptions, terracotta, and finds from excavations across the Pergamon sites. The star attraction locally is whatever remains after the famous Pergamon Altar frieze was taken to Berlin in the 1870s — which makes this visit also a meditation on the politics of antiquity and colonial-era looting.
📍 Bergama, İzmir Province, Turkey
- 2
One of the largest Roman structures surviving in the ancient Greek world — a colossal 2nd-century AD temple built over the River Selinus using an immense 196-metre bridge (still standing and still carrying traffic today) and dedicated to Egyptian gods Isis and Serapis. Its walls still rise to 19 metres and it uniquely contains a functioning mosque in one of its intact rotundas.
📍 Bergama, İzmir Province, Turkey
- 3
The breathtaking hilltop citadel of ancient Pergamon — a 335-metre-high mesa bearing the ruins of royal palaces, temples, stoas, arsenals, and the famous library, all dramatically terraced into the cliffside. Reached by a scenic cable car (gondola) or by road, it offers panoramic views across the entire Caicus plain to the Aegean Sea.
📍 Bergama, İzmir Province, Turkey
- 4
The most famous monument of the ancient city — a colossal monumental altar (35 × 33 metres) built by King Eumenes II around 180 BC and listed by three classical authors as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Its original foundation still stands on the acropolis, but the magnificent Gigantomachy frieze — depicting the battle of gods vs giants — was removed to Berlin in the 1870s and now fills an entire museum hall at the Pergamon Museum.
📍 Bergama, İzmir Province, Turkey
- 5
One of the steepest theatres in the ancient world — carved directly into the western face of the acropolis cliff at a near-vertiginous 80-degree gradient, seating 10,000 spectators with unobstructed views across the plain below. Its stage building was uniquely designed to be portable and dismantled between performances to preserve the panoramic view.
📍 Bergama, İzmir Province, Turkey
- 6
The crown of the Pergamon acropolis — a gleaming white marble Corinthian temple built in the early 2nd century AD on the highest terrace, dedicated to the deified emperors Trajan and Hadrian. Substantially restored, its towering columns and views over the plains make it one of the most photogenic Roman temples in all of Turkey.
📍 Bergama, İzmir Province, Turkey
- 7
The ruins of the ancient world's second-greatest library — housing 200,000 scrolls and rivalling only the Library of Alexandria, built by King Eumenes II in the 3rd century BC beside the Temple of Athena on the acropolis. When Egypt cut off papyrus exports to hobble the library's growth, Pergamon's response was to perfect parchment — the word itself derives from Pergamum — transforming the future of books and writing.
📍 Bergama, İzmir Province, Turkey
- 8
One of the three greatest healing sanctuaries of the ancient world — a complex of temples, baths, a theatre, and a 70-metre underground vaulted tunnel where patients underwent ritual therapies combining sacred spring water, mud baths, dream interpretation, and music. The world's second-most-celebrated physician, Galen, was born and trained here in the 2nd century AD, and the Asclepion became the blueprint for modern hospitals.
📍 Bergama, İzmir Province, Turkey
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