Pergamon and its Multi-Layered Cultural Landscape
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How it came to be
In 301 BC Lysimachus, king of Thrace, took Pergamon, and his lieutenant Philetaerus enlarged it. Philetaerus broke away in 281 BC and founded the Attalid dynasty, and Attalus I declared a fully independent kingdom after defeating the Galatians in 238 BC. The Peace of Apamea in 188 BC gave Pergamon almost all the former Seleucid lands in Asia Minor, and under Eumenes II, who ruled from 197 to 159 BC, the city was rebuilt on a monumental scale.
Temples, theatres, a stoa, a gymnasium, a great altar and a library of at least 200,000 scrolls, second only to Alexandria's, were set into the steep slope. Attalus III died without an heir in 133 BC and left Pergamon to Rome, and it became capital of the province of Asia. The physician Galen was born here and trained at the Asclepieion healing sanctuary.
The Romans added one of their largest amphitheatres, a great aqueduct, the Temple of Trajan and the Serapeum. In Byzantine times Pergamon shrank to a middle-sized town but remained one of the Seven Churches of Asia, and the Ottomans layered mosques, baths and bridges over it. UNESCO listed it in 2014.
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