Pamukkale: Ancient Cities In Modern Times

As September becomes October the mountain air develops a chill, there is noticeable change in the evening and morning temperatures which seem to be dropping a couple of degrees each day. The daytime sun is still hot though. Also changing is the UK’s view on Turkey, and news filters through whilst we’re in Pamukkale that, just like our Croatia trip, we will again face 14 days quarantine on our return. We’ll take it: the joy of these trips is well worth the pain of quarantine.

Pamukkale itself is a slightly unusual town, catering for large numbers of visitors to the obvious major attraction. A high percentage of these visitors come, it seems, on excursions of 1 or 2 days duration, and so a single night stay is the norm. Add to that the effects of COVID on visitor numbers this year, and you end up with a town of restaurants busy at lunchtime but then competing for a handful of clients at night.

Those same restaurants serve, for the most part, bog standard tourist fare, though one, Kayaç Wine House, stands head and shoulders above the rest. Great food, draught beer, local wine, low prices and friendly owners. And a scatty labrador. What more could you want?!

A few miles south of Pamukkale are the ruins of another breathtaking ancient city, Laodicea. Built on the top of hills overlooking the Lycus plains, there are again wonderfully preserved buildings, with artwork and mosaics from Roman times still visible. Laodicea’s story mirrors those of both Ephesus and Hierapolis: ancient civilisations drawn to the water source; creation of the city by the Greeks; enhancement and development by the Romans; decline triggered by successive earthquakes. And, finally, rediscovery through archeological excavations in the 20th century.

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Our quartet of ancient sites is completed with the 90-minute drive to Aphrodisias which ambushes us by being quite the most spectacular of all four, full of incredibly well preserved statuary, porticos, mosaics and even artwork, let alone the large sections of buildings. Its remote location means less visitors cone here even in busy years, yet Aphrodisias is even more impressive than the other three.

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By way of change from ancient sites we take a drive to the delightful mountain village of Karahayit, another source of health giving spa waters from hot springs, though this time an iron content gives a red staining to the rocks rather than the white of Pamukkale. Seriously hot water pumps from a spring on the edge of the village and forms pools amid the red tinted boulders. 

Karahayit has its own story. Pamukkale was, in the 1970s, becoming a victim of its own popularity. Mass tourism was destroying the white mountain, and large hotels had been built right on its summit. Thankfully, UNESCO stepped in and stopped the rot, the hotels were bulldozed and some sensibility was introduced to restrict visitor activity to today’s levels. And so the hotel trade refocused on Karahayit, building a handful of 5-star spa hotels around the hot springs in this modest village. But the visitors never came in the required numbers and Karahayit, then Pamukkale, ceased to be destinations of long term stay, and both visitor numbers and the time spent here dwindled. The envisaged success never materialised, so the hotels now sit incongruously idle and the village has resumed a semblance of normality. Karahayit itself is an enormously attractive village with a busy main street lined with shops and delightful cafes, once again quite authentic now that the dream of being an international destination has died.

In stark contrast to the farming villages which sit just a stone’s throw from Pamukkale, Denizli sits proudly at the foot of the mountains and gleams in the midday sun. Originally a trading post on the Silk Route, it is now a thoroughly modern thriving city with a large university and over 650,000 inhabitants, managing like many Turkish cities to effortlessly mix the modern with the traditional. 

Taking the dolmus into the city, we explore its modern centre for a while, including a brief visit to the ethnographic museum housed in “Ataturk’s House” – a slight misnomer as he only ever stayed one night there. Denizli translates into English as “like the sea”, a reference to the fact that this city is where most of the water cascading from the surrounding mountains ends up before it joins the Menderes on its way to sea. 

The city’s emblem is a cockerel, very appropriate since we’ve been awakened by cockerels and muezzins early every morning since arriving in Turkey. Our highlight of our Denizli visit is undoubtedly the Teleferik, a cable car which climbs steeply from a city suburb to 1,870 metres above sea level, affording magnificent views of the city, back across the plains to the white mountain of Pamukkale, and of the mountains which surround you at the top of the climb.

We have one full day left in Pamukkale, but it might just be a day to remember, with a bucket list item about to be ticked, and a travel ambition realised…