Hierapolis is an ancient city in Phrygia on top, and slightly behind today’s Pamukkale’s hot springs. It is also considered to be an UNESCO World Heritage Site. Being as it’s right at the upper most entrance to the hot springs, your visit throughout the Hierapolis will likely include more amateur modeling shoots. Russian women (mostly) in their bikinis posing on the stairs of the ancient ruins will likely provide a lot of entertainment to your visit. Walking through ruins of ancient cities, again, makes me marvel at what life was like and it also makes Andrew and I both laugh at what “ruins” of our cities today might look like. As Andrew said, our buildings today are disposable. If only modern skyscrapers could be made of stone blocks like these ancient baths, libraries, gymnasiums, and colosseums were. I’m sure that wouldn’t be expensive at all… or pose any kind of safety threat…
According to Wikipedia, the large necropolis (burial site) includes the Sarcophagus of Marcus Aurelius Ammianos, something we didn’t know when we walked through. Maybe we would have learned of this in the museum, but it was Monday, and alas, that meant the museum was closed.
As always, it was lovely walking through. I feel so fortunate that Andrew likes to just walk around and explore just as much as I do. We underestimated the power of the sun however and drank our water before we even started walking through the ruins. We probably would have lingered longer had we not been so hot and thirsty. You only need one day to explore Pamukkale and Hierapolis together. We did this, but because the town is so depressing (for lack of a better word) I split our visit up into two days on the blog instead of posting some rather boring video clips of empty streets and what appears to be a tourist town stuck in the 1970’s. It’s clear this town once was, but is no longer, and might not ever see better days…