Pamukkale Part Two - The ruins of Hieropolis and Laodicea

This is the second blog post today... if you missed the first one, you should really read it before this one...

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So yesterday we went to the calcium pools at Pamukkale. But at the same location, and included in your ticket price, is the ancient city of Hieropolis.  To us, it makes sense to explore both, but it seemed that most people were only interested in the water and the calcium formations. 

And when we bought our tickets, we also paid the extra 20 lira ($3.20 CAD, $2.45 USD) for the combined entrance to the pools, Hieropolis, and the ancient city of Laodicea since it was on the way back home anyhow.

The hot springs of Pamukkale have been used as a spa since 200 BC. And I'm sure that's why the city grew in that area to begin with. Hieropolis has one of the largest and best preserved necropolis (cemetery) in Turkey. Because the healing properties of the water were well known, it is believed that many older people retired to Hieropolis and of course eventually died anyhow. Maybe one of the reasons for the extra large cemetery?!

The theater is in pretty good condition!

Ruins everywhere.

Many channels were built to funnel the water.

Ruth, at the theater.

This theater seats 15,000.

The stage was closed off, so I couldn't get down there to do my Julius Caesar impression!

These houses date to the 11th century.

An archeologists impression of what the city would have looked like.

There is a small museum on site showing off some of the better finds here.

Remains of the Roman bath house.

Main Street.

And it really was the main street in the city. 

Can you guess what this building was?

The latrine!

Here is an artist's depiction of what the latrine would have been like.

Not a lot of modesty in those days for while you're doing your business!

The main entrance gate to the city.

It's all Greek to me.

On the outskirts of town, outside the main gate was the cemetery. Hundreds of huge rock tombs.

The Hieropolis ancient cemetery.

Lizards.

The Cursed Tomb.

On the façade of the Cursed Tomb is an inscription that describes the punishment that will be inflicted upon anyone who violates the tomb. As well as the usual fines, it invokes "diseases, misfortunes, and punishments in the next world". 

It was almost 1:45pm at this point, and we still had to get back to the car. But there was no easy way to do that! We could either walk all the way back to the top of the pools and then down the calcium walkway... or walk on the road. We chose the road because it was probably faster. It was only about 4 kms (2.5 miles) and it was downhill all the way.

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Back at the car, our feet were about done. We had already put on 12 kms (7.4 miles) and we still wanted to see Laodicea on the way home.

So that's what we did.

Loadicea is a kind of a different site. Again, we were pretty much the only ones there. It's a huge site, and not really very attractive. There are no trees or greenery. 

There is a lot of archeological stuff going on here.

Including three big cranes.

Do you see any other tourists?

No. I think we only saw one other couple.

They are rebuilding the theater.

How did they move the big blocks back in the day?

Rocks that are all classified and numbered.

Apparently this was all rubble.

A massive earthquake in 640 AD totally levelled the city.

We would have liked to see more, but we were running out of ambition! We drove home and bought a bottle of wine and a roast chicken and put our feet up! We had done 15 kms (9.3 miles)!

Both sites are worth a visit if you are at all interested in this stuff. We probably didn't do Laodicea justice because we were tired. And in fact, if you want to see everything at Pamukkale and Hieropolis, that's a full day in itself. Now you can see why we split it up into two blog posts!

Tomorrow (Wednesday) we are headed back to the coast for a one week stay in Güzelçamlı.

Check out today's deals at www.campingandrvgeardeals.com

Total distance walked in Turkey 202.6 kms (125.6 miles).