Trev's travails: Around Antalya

On one of our days in Antalya, we hired a car and drove some 50 km east to Aspendos.

The area around Antalya includes the ancient regions of Lycia, Pamphylia, Cilicia, and Psidia. These have some of the most interesting archaeological sites where uninterrupted history from the traces of the earliest man to the present can be found. Aspendos is one of those sites.

Aspendos changed hands regularly in ancient times between the Persians, Greeks and Spartans, before coming under the control of Alexander the Great around 333 BC. After his death, Aspendos became part of the Seleucid kingdom and was later absorbed by the kings of Pergamon

In 133 BC, the city became part of the Roman province of Asia. Roman rule consisted mainly of successive consuls and governors demanding protection money and carting off the city’s treasures. Only with the establishment of the Roman Empire did the city prosper, growing into an important trade centre, its wealth based on salt from a nearby lake.

The Theatre – dating back to the 2^nd century AD is one of the best preserved ancient theatres in the world. It is still used to stage the annual Aspendos Opera and Ballet Festival.

The Aspendos theatre was built by the architect Zeno. He used a Roman design, with an elaborate stage behind which the scenery could be lowered, instead of allowing the natural landscape behind the stage to act as a backdrop, as had been the custom in Hellenistic times

The stage, auditorium and arcade above are all intact, as is the several-storey-high stage building. What you see today is pretty much what the spectators saw during the theatre’s heyday.

A dubious legend relates that the theatre was built after the king of Aspendos announced that he would give the hand of his beautiful daughter to a man who built some great work for the benefit of the city.

Two men rose to the challenge, one building the theatre, the other an aqueduct. Both finished work simultaneously, so the king offered to cut his daughter in two, giving a half to each man. The builder of the theatre declared that he would rather renounce his claim than see the princess dismembered and was, of course, immediately rewarded with the hand of the girl for his unselfishness.

Later, the theatre was used as a Selçukkervansaray, and restoration work from that period – plasterwork decorated with red zigzags – is visible over the stage