Aphrodisias is another site where careful excavation has rendered a seemingly accurate impression of what the city must have looked like when it was alive.

 

Credit goes to Turkish archaeologist Kenan Erim, who began his meticulous reconstruction in 1961 and still searches for funding to support his efforts today. His labor of love seems appropriate for a city devoted to Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love.

 

While pottery found at the site indicates the earlier presence of Bronze Age inhabitants, the city did not take on the name of Aphrodisias until the 6th Century BC. The Temple of Aphrodite became a center of worship for pilgrims who came from afar to partake in orgies dedicated to the Goddess of Love.

 

The money they spent in Aphrodisias combined with its taxless status as a free city made it prosperous until Christianity put an end to pagan worship.

 

In the 5th Century AD Christians changed the city's name to Stravopolis and replaced the Temple of Aphrodite with a basilica.

Today some of the temple columns have been propped up again, but visitors will have to imagine the rest of this house of love, and the forms of worship which took place there.

 

Other features of the city are in better condition, such as the 30,000-seat stadium; one of the finest left from the Graeco-Roman world. Also uncovered are the extensive Baths of Hadrian, an intimate Odeon and the Bishop's palace, with its beautiful blue marble columns.

The more popular attraction in this area is a magnificent white mountain adorned with pockets of warm water. Hot springs loaded with calcium have spent thousands of years brimming over the mountain, leaving behind enough deposits to make appropriate the Turkish name of Pamukkale, or 'Cotton Castle'. Thousands come here each year to sit and relax in these pools, which all have varying temperatures, depending on their proximity to the springs.

 

 

In Ancient times Pamukkale was a famous spa called Hierapolis. The springs were just as popular then as they are now for their reputedly health-inducing properties.

Hierapolis was a sacred city, and Ancient historians, tell us that an extraordinary number of temples were built here. It remained a center of pagan worship until the Christians moved in and erected edifices to their own God.