Termessos
Trip Start
Oct 01, 2005
1
147
158
Trip End
Jul 21, 2007
Antalya, Turkey
Monday, June 25, 2007
But we were really here to see the ruins of the ancient city of Termessos which lie in a rugged mountain valley 30km out of town. The warlike Termessians lived in their fortress city and fought off Alexander the Great in 333BC. In 70BC the Romans accepted them as an independent state rather than take them on, which is saying something.
As we walked along the steep forested track that leads deeper up the valley from the carpark, we saw great stone blocks and fallen columns scattered all through the undergrowth. There are carved stone doorways that lead to nowhere and random pieces of moss covered masonry lying around
Amphitheater
. Signs indicate what the buildings used to be. Two imposing walls of a Hamam (bath) looked down from the top of the first incline and a dishevelled stone pathway continued further upwards and past a barely discernible collonaded street. The next sign led us towards the Tiyatro (theater), and after navigating over piles of blocks and half buried column capitals we walked over a small rise and beheld the ruined but dramatic and massive amphitheatre, from the top and back of the theatre, looking way down at the once grand stage. The setting is breathtaking. The surrounding mountains form the backdrop with the sea clearly visible way below on the horizon. There was not another soul around as we walked over the old dedraggled stones and took in the atmosphere, the sun beating down and the cool mountain wind blowing strongly. A fabulous place to sit down for a while, rehydrate and try to imagine what it must have been like by crudely using the clues around. The holes in the masonry that formed the seats told us there was once a roof but as to how much it covered we couldn't tell. We reckoned it could have held 5000 spectators and wondered if it was used for all business or just entertainment. We spent another hour hacking through the jungle with our machetes (lol), coming across the ruined temple of Zeus and Artemis which showed little of their former glory apart from the sheer scale and sturdiness of the existing walls. We followed a separate track which led us to some clearly important tombs cut into a cliffside and the track eventually led us back to the car park at the beginning of the valley.
That night we bought a doner, had a few beers and a walk around the bazzare where the shop owners almost clawed us inside to view their wares.
The next morning we bought a quality backgammon set off a guy in the old town and humped our bags on and off three buses which at length ended 150km further down the coast in chill out zone central; Olimpos.
