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Saturday, July 18, 2009

Aegean Ruins

Life goes on with long days at the beach and some short trips to near by places. As I wrote on my last post we were in Bodrum. On the way to and back from Bodrum we stopped at some lovely ancient ruins. Aegean region is full of them and I love visiting and spending peaceful and quiet hours under the shadows of history.

We first stopped at Lagina; a temple area dedicated to the Goddess Hekate, and it is one of the most important cult centers of pagan Anatolia. Hekate had been honoured as the goddess of childbirth, nurturing the young, gates and walls, doorways, crossroads, magic, lunar lore, torches and dogs. A Goddess for childs and dogs. I think I had worshipped her on another life time.

Second stop was at a near by site. Stratonikea. A city built by a king for his wife around 270 BC. A woman loved too much or some unforgotten political games for power. The ever present romantic in me, want to believe the story of a loved woman. A city of love. Then centuries passed and some Turks established another town on top of the ruins. However they had to abondened their lovely homes because of earthquakes. So today it is possible to visit remains from totally two different periods.




The last stop was at Euromos. A long forgotten town when you look at the pages of a history book. However a magnificent temple dedicated to Zeus still welcomes you to a very different time. Temple is among the half dozen best preserved monuments in Asia and dates from 2nd century AD. Definitely a photographer's paradise. Now I have dreams of photographing this place under the snow..


And finally a very tired Goddess captured by the camera of her husband :))

12 comments:

  1. It's magnificent. Your photos make me want to be there. I have always wanted to visit these ruins.

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  2. Lovely, I so enjoy travelling to these amazing spots through your posts

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  3. "... under the shadows of history", I love that! And your on my blogroll now too (thanks so much).

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  4. Thanks for stopping by my blog and for commenting. It's nice to meet you. WOW those are some great shots of those ruins. I hope you hav a great weekend!

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  5. Can I volunteer to be your backpack carrier? I want to travel to all these exquisite places!

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  6. Great!
    Love the archeological place of there!
    Those columns sound like Acropolis...
    Like to visit there so much!

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  7. Wonderful places, I'm green with envy.

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  8. Wow, these places sound incredible, especially the city with two different eras of ruins! I would love to be closer to such amazing pieces of ancient history. Thanks for sharing and also for visiting and commenting on Under A Paper Moon. xx

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  9. Thanks for taking us virtually through and through Turkey. I wouldn't be able to get to see as much even if I were out there. So a big THANK YOU... I so much await your posts, I kinda got addicted to em now...

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  10. hey! this is amazing you are having a great time in you vacations... and thanks for sharing this amazing ancient cities from your country with us!!! I agree with you just walking around this places make you feel all the history they have.

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  11. These pics are great. I am a big fan of visiting ancient ruins. The last ruins that I visited were the Ruinas de Copan in Honduras and it was a very cool experience. It's amazing that civilizations existed and thrived such a long time ago.

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  12. Those ruins are amazing - love dreaming about history and what has gone on there in the past. You can really sense the atmosphere...

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