Bergama
folk dancing in Bergama
We eventually spent three nights at Caravan Restaurant Camping in Bergama – a decent site with grass pitches (with some gravel reinforcement), good toilets and showers free wifi, washing machines (8TL), a swimming pool and – as the name implies – a restaurant. A snip at 30TL. We missed it on the way in to town because the sign had fallen down, though it was in the process of being fixed.
Red Basilica
After arriving in Bergama we wandered round the Red Basilica, the ‘Throne of the Devil’ according to St John the Divine due to worship of pagan Egyptian gods there, but due to dangerous dilapidation we couldn’t walk through it to see the hole where the priest used to hide so that could pretend his voice was coming out of a statue. The next day we wandered around Bergama doing a little light shopping and having a very tasty buffet meal (19YTL total but this was a restaurant used by locals and a bit cheaper).
Tea for two in Bergama
Bergama is a delightful little town, seemingly unspoiled by tourism - perhaps they bus in to the ancient city of Pergamon at the top of a hill overlooking town , lunch in one of the huge restaurants, and then scarper again. If so they miss a nicely laid back town with some fine old buildings and – while we were there – a cultural festival involving street dancing. It was probably our favourite town in Turkey simply because it was an ordinary town where people go about their ordinary (non-tourist) business.
Trajan's temple
John and Sue (previously seen at Akcacil & Marmure) turned up at the campsite so they gave us a lift in their van (more compact than ours) up the hill to the ancient city of Pergamon and we spent the morning exploring the huge site and gradually working our way downhill back to Bergama and then on to the campsite ( about 4+ miles). Trajan’s Temple right at the top was the highlight, the theatre (our sixth this trip) was huge and fearsomely steep, and the mosaics in Building Z on the way down the hill were excellent.
The Temple of Zeus had been nicked by the Germans and is now in the special Pergamon Museum in Berlin. During our wanderings we saw some owls, lots of tortoises and what might have been a snake or perhaps a slow worm.
The Temple of Zeus had been nicked by the Germans and is now in the special Pergamon Museum in Berlin. During our wanderings we saw some owls, lots of tortoises and what might have been a snake or perhaps a slow worm.
amphitheatre cut into the hill
the lower levels of Pergamon
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