Aspendos, Colossae, Laodicea, Lycus Valley
We started our day early at Aspendos- Turkey’s best preserved Roman Theater, it dates to AD 161! It’s also has the best persevered stage back ground. Capacity is 8,500 people! Near by there is an aqueduct, Roman Bridge (4 Century AD) and Roman bath. My voice boomed from the stage!
We stopped next at the tell or mound of Colossae. Some how there is something very exciting hiking up a grass covered hill to a site that has not been excavated. Knowing that layers of history lie under your feet and seeing square corners and pottery shards from history. There are exposed caves where there were tombs, visible remains of a bridge near by, all from the early church time period.
On the way to Laodicea we stopped along a road and saw the remains of a small aqueduct that took cool water from the mountains near Colossae to Laodicea. Not much remains, but it was incredible to see.
The site at Laodicea was much larger and developed. There was a fascinating “house church” currently be excavated from 1st Century AD. It is a rare early example of a typical house, but a church or we might say a small chapel has been added to structure. It gives a look into how the church met. First in people’s houses and then churches grew out of that and wanted dedicated spaces to worship together. Unfortunately, since it is currently being excavated we could not get very good pictures. First century!!!
Laodicea has columns, a market, two theaters, churches from later times in history, and a cute small little shop with two young clerks who were eager to sell us two diet Coke’s. It was super hot.
On the way to the hotel we stopped at Pamukkale where there is a hot spring and the water has calcium carbonate in it - it harden to a white when dry. It looks like winter and ice - but is hot. We will start our day there tomorrow at 6:30am!
