If you are interested in discovering traces of ancient civilizations and seeing how people lived thousands of years ago, the ancient city of Pergamon should be one of the first destinations to add to your travel list.

Founded in the third century B.C. as the capital of the Attalids, the city of Pergamon (also called Pergamum) is located 26 kilometers (16.2 miles) from the coastline of the Aegean Sea on a foreland on the north side of the river Caicus (modern-day Bakırçay) and northwest of the present-day Bergama district of Izmir province in western Turkey.

The remains of the city were first discovered in the 1870s by German engineer Carl Humann.

Pergamon was home to an amphitheater that could seat 50,000 people and a theater for 30,000 people, the second largest library in the ancient world as well as the first hospital – just some of the reasons why it’s definitely worth a visit.

Today, only Viran Kapı (Ruined Gate) stands as the surviving arch of the theater.

Theater and library of Pergamon

The well-preserved Theater of Pergamon dates back to the Hellenistic period and has 78 rows of seats. At a height of 36 meters (118 feet), it is the steepest of all ancient theaters. The seating area (koilon) is divided horizontally by two walkways, called diazomata, and vertically by 0.75-meter-wide stairways into seven sections in the lowest part of the theater and six in the middle and upper sections.

The Library of Pergamon was the second largest in the ancient Greek world after the Library of Alexandria, containing at least 200,000 scrolls. The location of the library building, however, is not certain. Built by Eumenes II between 220 B.C. and 159 B.C, and situated at the northern end of the Acropolis, it became one of the most important libraries in the ancient world. The library consisted of four rooms, the largest of which was the main reading room, lined with many shelves. A 3-meter statue of Athena, modeled after her statue in the Parthenon, stood in the main reading room.