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Old friends are in town and we took the opportunity to visit Iassos. It's one of my favourite sites as it's not on the coach party route and the new road only takes an hour from Bodrum. (A new road to me is anything less than 15 years old.) It also has the added bonus of being excavated by Italian archaeologists who are happy to let the interested wander all over. It's a very pleasant feeling to be welcome on an excavation; on a visit to Asar Island last month, a jobsworth blew a whistle every time someone stepped over an invisible arbitrary line, which had us almost hopping and jumping up the hill as if prodded by hot pokers.
As we wandered around Iassos, the only three visitors on the site, Jeni, Peter and I were trying to remember the last time we were together in these ruins and the fact that my daughter wet her knickers on the trip suggests that it was about 17 years ago (Don't worry, she never reads my blog). The Italians have been very busy since then and much of the agora is now uncovered.
Watching this chap reveal the beautiful marble carving had me briefly hankering for my long abandoned profession...
until his mate arrived and I was reminded that when I last held a trowel in exchange for a (negligible) weekly wage, I was either down a storage pit or kneeling in a foot of soggy clay.
We had to climb over a few wire fences and walls - placed not to keep the visitor out, but the cows in, but this adds to the sense of discovering the site for the first time, no matter how many visits have been made.
The mosaics on the top of the hill have been covered with a roof, but the tesserae from the most decorative elements are sadly missing. Just visible in the corner of this photo is a tiny remnant of a painted wall.
When I got home, I hunted through my old albums and came up with the three photos below. Taken in the 1980s, they show the mosaics and painted wall when they were open to the elements.
Unfortunately, there was no sign last week of this splendid Pegasus.
Sounds like you had a very enjoyable time. Well done the Italians for carrying out this work. Didn't they do a lot of excavation and restoration at Hierapolis? (Not that I am at all knowledgable on this subject but something rings a bell)
ReplyDeleteDon't know the answer to that. I haven't been for such a long time.
Delete. . what a good place for a visit - with the cool weather coming it's on the list. Just love being around places without too many people spoiling it (for me - selfish old git!).
ReplyDeleteI'm a selfish old git too when it comes to archaeological sites.
DeleteThat looks fantastic. We shall ask for directions. We are hoping to head over towards Bodrum if we get any decent riding weather in winter.
ReplyDeleteFrom the north, you'd take the road before Milas. Probably would take you well under two hours.
DeleteHow good is that...to be really able to see what is going on. No crowds and no jobsworths.
ReplyDeleteIt's how we used to visit sites. Glad this one hasn't changed.
DeleteWhat an amazing place to visit.....looks like you had an enjoyable time there. It seems so interesting and exciting to see them excavate something right before you. I love those ruins....I make my husband nuts when we go there to Turkey, he's not one to trek among them. I guess he grew up in Bergama and played amongst the ruins so for him it seems like nothing.
ReplyDeleteHe has some land there that he inherited and supposedly Cleo and her 'stuff' is apparently there so that land he can't build on or nothing...it's just sitting there. I'm dying to get a shovel and go and dig there.
Thank you ever so much for this post...fascinating. I sure do hope your daughter doesn't read this post. LOL.
What a fantastic place to grow up . Shame he can't use the land though.
DeleteA couple of years ago we were passing through Iassos to visit the (now disastrous Horizon Sky development. We nearly popped in. Wished we had done now.
ReplyDeleteWhen you are back here as a tourist, we can go together.
DeleteSadly, the very wildness and natural state of these ruins that made them so much more appealing than their over policed counterparts in other parts of the Mediterranean, may have been their eventual downfall. What a shame Pegasus has been taken/ destroyed/ lost...
ReplyDeleteI'm hoping that Pegasus has either been taken off to a museum, or is covered up and out of harms way.
DeleteThank you for sharing with us your visit to this interesting archeological site of Iassos. I especially enjoyed your photographs of when the finds were open to the elements and now. So much lost in just a few short years of exposure. And thank you, also, for pointing out the painted wall. I thought that was just the slant of light until your note made me really look. Peace.
ReplyDeleteI only wish I had taken more photos when I was there 3 decades ago.
DeleteTruly fascinating to this archaeology buff, BtoB, much enhanced by your splendid photos. Turkey is obviously a treasure house of important sites and sadly I have yet to visit there.
ReplyDelete