Aphrodisias

Our first set of ruins was the ancient greek city of Aphrodisias, named after Aphrodite.  This town was close to a large marble mine so many of ancient greek and roman statues come from here.  There is an amazing museum, one of the few places you can see marble statues in their original homes without going to the british museum, but it was closed on Monday.  Wish we had known.

Sebasteion

the site of the imperial cult.  what that is, I'm not really sure, but... 

amazing reliefs

Partial walls facing the sebasteion

Walking towards the theater we passed through ruins of the town

The theater was my first and very very cool.  A theater is a theater.  It feels like exactly what it is, even after a thousand years.

Erics phone takes nice panoramas

Access tunnel

The archeologists or whatnot stored many carvings and interesting pieces in the stage storage rooms.  I liked this bull

Writing.  No idea what it says

Eric on the throne

There are columns everywhere.  Some standing since ancient time (not many), some restored to various degrees of believability, and many many in pieces all over the ground.  

I love how you can get a feel for how pretty the floor was

Bouleuterion, or council house

The restored columns of the temple of Aphrodite.  See how small Eric looks?

Even with all their restoration work, most of the place looks like this.  Earth quakes will do that to you

Tetrapylon

a monumental gate leading to the temple of Aphrodisias

The countryside was just spectacular

My favorite part of this town was the spectacularly preserved stadium.  Possibly the best one in all of the Mediterranean (according to wikipedia)

It had the ability to seat 30,000 people

and of course, statues and marble carving everywhere.  We didn't realize that other ruins would have so few in comparison.  Damn the british (and others) and their stealing of antiquities