Pamukkale pools
Hot water and the Gates of Hell
The delights of Turkey are many and varied, and over the five days we were in the country, we covered many different areas. From Ankara we proceeded to Pamukkale, the site of hot springs, and the very beautiful white terraces of what is called travertine, a carbonate mineral deposited over eons by the waters from the hot springs. The white wall that can be seen from across the valley is 160 meters high and extends for nearly 2.7 kilometers.
Pamukkale
The naturally formed pools are filled with water that flows down from the hot springs above. For thousands of years the springs have attracted visitors, and in a mad drive to capitalize on tourists, several hotels were even built on top of this natural formation. The redirecting of water from the hot springs to the hotels, combined with thousands of visitors walking across the site eventually led to severe damage, and in the late 1980s, with the site being declared a World Heritage site, the hotels were demolished, and tourist traffic across the pools was stopped. Now, visitors can marvel at the natural sight, but only small pools at the bottom of the mountain are made available for visitors to dip bare feet into the warm water.
Intricate mosaic on a path, Ephesus, Turkey
Death by carbon dioxide
What is often overlooked by visitors is that the pools were once the site of a Greco-Roman city, Hierapolis. Well-preserved, the ruins of this ancient city are well worth a visit, as is the nearby museum. Since our visit in the early 1990s, much has changed at this site. Where we unwittingly walked across the limestone formations, visitors now can only look at them from a distance. When we visited the area, we saw plenty of evidence of an ancient city, but it was difficult to imagine what the site might have looked like during the Greek and Roman periods. One of the highlights of the area of course were the pools, and even at the bottom of those remnants, we could identify Roman pillars and other objects strewn across the floors. We visited the site of one or two cemeteries, and again saw a lot of evidence of the city’s inhabitants and their dead from two millennia previous. Apparently, since our visit, restoration work at the site has seen the rebuilding of several structures and gates, a theatre which is now being used once again for performances, more necropolises, and Pluto’s gate to Hell – a narrow cave where the carbon dioxide gas from nearby springs is so dense that anyone entering the area may well die.
The advertisement…
Culture above and below the belly button
Having duly recorded our footage and done our intro and outro segments for the episode about Pamukkale, we traveled on to Ephesus, another ancient city that prospered during the Greek and Roman periods. Although the city was once situated on the coast of the Mediterranean, its harbour slowly silted up, and over the past 1,000 years, the coast has slowly moved further away from the site – Bangkok beware. There were plenty of interesting buildings to visit here, and in some places, the mosaics that decorated the floors were spectacular. Our show of course being a show that would present some of the ‘stranger’ things to our audience, had to find a few interesting things to talk about, and we found them with the help of our guide, who quite proudly indicated one etched stone that was ‘likely’ the first ever advertisement for a ‘house of ill-repute’ in the world – this of course made it into the program. What could also not be neglected were the communal toilet facilities in what was likely a bathhouse from the Roman era – a row of 15 raised toilet ‘seats’ carved from stone, aligned in a row over a deep pit that was cleaned by a constant flow of water provided by a branch of one of the six aqueduct systems that supplied the city with water.
The theatre
Two other major points, actually, make that three, of Ephesus are: One, its amphitheatre. With a seating capacity of roughly 25,000, this theatre was likely one of the largest in the ancient world. The theatre faces what used to be the city’s harbour. As I mentioned, the coast has moved, and the nearest water is now 4 kilometers away, but during its time, the amphitheatre was situated right on the coast, and the winds from the Mediterranean would help to amplify and carry the words of the actors from the stage below to the crowd in the ‘bleachers’ as it were (it was an open-air theatre). We tested this phenomenon, and although we were not dramatists from two thousand years ago, by some simple projection experiments, it was quite possible to make ourselves heard by eager participants in our experiment, particularly when they were told they would be on Thai television with Thailand’s biggest TV star.
Willing experiment participants
Of course theatre then was nothing like it is today, and there were no Sir Laurence Oliviers giving soliloquies from some corner of the stage; only Dithyrambs, Greek tragedies, and Roman comedies were performed here. Eventually theatres also became the sites of sporting events, and eventually, bloody arenas for violent executions where people faced ravenous lions, or had to literally fight for their lives.
The Library facade
The second building is Hadrian’s Temple, dating from the 2nd century, while the third building is the Library of Celsus. Dating from the second century, the library was constructed to house up to 12,000 scrolls, and was one of the ancient world’s great libraries along with that of Alexandria. Unfortunately, earthquakes and fires destroyed the library and its contents. Only the faced now stands, having been reconstructed in the 1970s. Having spent an entire day recording the many beautiful elements of ancient Ephesus, it was time to make a trip to the nearest airport, and to fly to Istanbul, where an entire series of wild, colourful (and painful) activities awaited us, from Turkish carpets and tea, to belly dancers and a Turkish bath.
