Magnesia

Today is Kat's birthday - like me, like many of us, the second one during a pandemic lockdown, so we decided to use our daytime 'freedom' exploring another of the ancient archeological sites in this area known to ancient Greeks as Ionia. Today, to the ruins of Magnesia. The weather was gorgeous - warm and sunny, perfect for wandering about.  The city was clearly quite large and busy with library, temple and public square and other facilities, (including both gymnasium and amphitheater which we didn't see on this occasion, being a bit of an up hill walk) - but the most impressive sight and site was the stadium - several minutes drive up a track from the 'down town' ruins in today's main blip. Frankly, I have never seen anything like it. Literally built in to the side of the mountain, most of the stadium still remains. Statistics include an original crowd capacity of 30,000.  I've put a couple of shots in extras - the panoramic view taken by Graham who was the only one of us three who felt like tackling all those steps! but if you zoom on the ground floor photo that I took from close to the entry portal you can get some idea of the size of the place. Other extras are of 'down town' none of which really do justice to this amazing place.  We also loved the surrounding wilderness of wild meadow flowers making the entire experience magically idyllic as we made our way through daisies and other wildflowers.  (extra).


The journey home included a supermarket trip to buy foodstuffs for our 'birthday barbecue' and the three of us passed a lovely time in early evening garden sunshine before enjoying our meal in my sun room, that of course, finished with birthday cake for Kat.


Magnesia or Magnesia on the Maeander was an ancient Greek city in Ionia, considerable in size, at an important location commercially and strategically in the triangle of Priene, Ephesus and Tralles. The city was named Magnesia, after the Magnetes from Thessaly who settled the area along with some Cretans. Wikipedia