Priene, Miletus, and Didyma

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When touring the area, the stops of Priene, Miletus, and Didyma and are usually lumped together in one day -- a "PMD" tour.

Priene:

The scattered column pieces of the Temple of Athena lie all over the place and piled down the slope where they fell during an earthquake.



'Look at the size of those columns!' is what we said when we saw this place. Our tour guide replied, 'just wait until the end of the day.'


The lion-footed seat in the front of this theater was for VIPs. Naturally, we sat it in (surprisingly comfortable!) and took pictures:



Miletus:

The thing to see in Miletus (once a pretty important city and the archeology museum in Istanbul is full of statues from here) is the theater:



Gladiators fighting:


Griffins:


Here's a graffiti death threat to the builder of the theater for stiffing the workers.




Didyma:

The Temple of Apollo was the second largest temple in the ancient world (just a bit smaller than the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus). A modern town was built right around the temple -- we had lunch across the street. This is what the site would look like from the air (yes, we took a picture of a picture):




The inside of the roof of the temple was once covered with these griffin decorations:







And for scale:



We flew out of Izmir the following morning. Just in time, it seems, since this is what we saw when we woke up: a cruise ship in port.