Turkey is one of my favorite countries to visit, as there is an abundance of historical sites. My bucket list for Turkey seems to be ever-growing, but here are some of the places I’ve visited in the Marmara & Aegean regions. Here are posts for the Mediterranean and the Central Anatolian region.

Istanbul: In his lecture series the Ottoman Empire, Professor Kenneth Harl states, “the Ottomans took a ruined, unimpressive Byzantine city in 1453 and turned it into the capital of Sunni Islam, the city of paradise on earth. The Sultans were arbiters of culture and good taste. Mehmet II took great efforts to repopulate the city. He began the construction of what we called the covered bazaar after taking the city. It helped to revive the economic life of the city. Another important new complex were the mosques. Every mosque had a soup kitchen for the poor attached to it, as well as schools. This help to ensure the city’s rapid growth and recovery. The city grew beyond the old Theodosian Walls of the city. The two great structures all tourists go to today in Istanbul are the Topkapi Palace and the Blue Mosque. The Sultan resided at Topkapi, similar to the Forbidden City in China, the Assyrian monarchs at Nineveh, the great Hittite kings at Hattusa.” Below are some images of Istanbul I have taken during different trips to the city.

Troy: Inhabited between 3600 BCE and 500 CE, Troy was rediscovered in the 19th century. Frank Calvert and Heinrich Schliemann began excavating at Troy in the 1870s, the site of the semi-legendary Trojan War, which may have occurred sometime around 1200 BCE. In 1960 Marjorie Braymer published a book entitled The Walls of Windy Troy, which tells the story of the excavation. She writes that upon uncovering what they believed to be the Scaean Gate, “into their minds moved a procession of heroic figures who had passed through that famed gateway and into legend… this was near where Hector bid farewell to his wife, where Aeneas had fled the burning city.” When you first enter the archaeological site, you see the ruins of wall that someone imagine to be the wall that Achilles rode around, dragging Hector’s body behind him. Alexander the Great is said to have visited Troy on route to conquer the Persian Empire, stopping at and making a sacrifice at the Tomb of Achilles, which remains undiscovered. There are day trips offered from Istanbul, which are quite an excursion: 5 hours to Troy, a few hours visiting the archaeological site, and 5 hours back. It is quite exhausting, but worth it in my opinion. There are also overnight options, during which you also get to also visit Gallipoli.

The Temple of Artemis near Ephesus: In her work Ionia: A Quest, Freya Start writes, “in the autumn of 1952 I traveled about the western coasts of Asia Minor, and counted, at the end, fifty five ruined sites that I had visited: in only one of the–and that was Pergamum–had I met another tourist, sightseeing like myself.” It couldn’t be more different today. Ephesus alone attracts 1 million tourists a year. Describing the Temple of Artemis, Stark wrote, “few places can minister like the site of the temple in Ephesus to the triumph of time. The process of building, ever richer and more magnificent, went on through centuries, till the steam of religion changed its bed. What is now left of one of the richest of sanctuaries is sunk in a swampy hollow. The tourist agency will tell you that it is not worth visiting; nor is it, if the tangible alone is to count in this world. But if we treat history as a friend, and ease its facts with love and knowledge, the imagination can supply much of truth; as in a palimpset, the ghost of the temple of Artemis will stand in the swamp.”

Pamukkale (Cotton Castle) & Hierapolis: Describing Hierapolis, Stark writes, “here the huge solidity of the Roman ruins spreads itself along a ledge… however impressive, one feels a deadness in the heart of this stone… there was this sadness under the vaults of Hierapolis. (At) the Plutonium the gods of the nether world were worshipped.. (with) an opening full of vapour and so misty and dense that one can scarcely see the ground. Strabo threw sparrows in and they immediately breathed their last and fell… though it was apparently innocuous to eunuchs.” Today it seems most tourists go to visit Pamukkale where, “the strange warm water spilled down the slope as it did in Strabo’s day, green-white, light and gay, and full of bubbles—building a swift incrustation of lime, delicate and dazzling as snowflakes.”