Miletus (Milet)

Aegean, Turkey 1 tours visit here

Miletus was one of the leading cities of Ionia, a Greek maritime and commercial power on the Aegean coast of Anatolia whose colonies reached as far as the Black Sea. It was also an intellectual centre: the philosophers Thales and Anaximander worked here, and Hippodamus, credited with the grid plan later used across the Greek world, was born here. The ruins spread across a wide, open site near the village of Balat in Aydin province. The centrepiece is the large Hellenistic theatre, enlarged under the Romans, whose stacked seating still rises above the plain and can be climbed for a view over the site. Around it lie the Faustina Baths, named after the wife of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, the agora and council chamber, and the Ilyas Bey mosque complex from the later Turkish beylik period. The landscape explains much of its history: silt carried down by the Meander (Buyuk Menderes) river gradually filled its harbours and left the former seaport inland. Miletus is usually visited on the classic circuit with Priene and Didyma, and about an hour covers the main monuments. There is little shade, so mornings are easier in summer, and low ground can be waterlogged after winter rain.