Tour Details;
You will be met at Harbour, Airport or at your Hotel in Izmir or Kusadasi. Our guide will hold up a sign
with your name on it. Then join the Pergamum and Akslepion Tour for half day. After pick up we will drive to
Bergama City. It is a 1.30 hour drive from Izmir to Pergamum. It takes 3 hours’ drive from Kusadasi.
Pergamum had a significant place of its own in all Asia. Historically the city was the capital of the greatest
Kingdom that existed in this region. The city is situated at 100 km north of Izmir. The Roman historian Pliny
Called it: "By far the most famous city in all Asia". The cause for this importance was this: When John wrote his
Letter, Pergamum had been a capital city for almost four hundred years. After the mythical times, Pergamum
Had been the scene of several cultures, ranging from those of the Stone and Bronze Ages until the Archaic and
Classical Periods. Among the temples, palaces and agora’s, the Asclepion, which were constructed in the course
of one century, belonged the big Zeus Altar and the Parchment Library. They stand as the most brilliant works
of Art of the fourth and third century B.C. in Anatolia. The Parchment Library housed the most famous collection
of Books of that time, written on a type of processed lamb and goat skins. This was a process invented in
Pergamum, when the rulers of Ptolemean Egypt embargoed the export of Egyptian papyrus sheets to
Pergamum. Other magnificent buildings of this period are the Temple of Athena and those of Demeter and
Dyonisos.
Asclepion was known under the name of "The Pergamum God of Health". In ancient times there were in this
Part of the world three favourite religious shrines and holy places. They were: the Artemisia of Ephesus, the
Apollo cult of Delphi and that of Asclepius Pergamum. Asclepius the deity health and medicine served the people
For several hundred years; thus making Pergamum a medical centre of very great importance. Famous medical
Scholars, like Hippocrates and Galenus, were born in Pergamum and worked there.
After The Lunch We will continue to drive to Red Basilica, Photo break time for the Red Basilica,
Red Basilica, The massive structure was built in the early 2nd century (under Hadrian) as a temple to the
popular Egyptian god Serapis. It was later (4th-5th centuries) converted into a Byzantine church. The Red
Basilica was destroyed in the Arab raids of 716 to 717 AD, after which a smaller church was built within the
ruins.
Afterwards, you drive back to Harbour, Airport or your hotel in Kusadasi or Izmir.
