Thyatira (Akhisar (Thyateira))

Aegean, Turkey 2 tours visit here

Thyatira is the ancient city beneath modern Akhisar, a market town in Manisa Province, in Turkey's inland Aegean region. Set in ancient Lydia on the road between Pergamon and Sardis, it was a manufacturing and trading town rather than a monumental capital. Inscriptions here name an unusual number of trade guilds: wool workers, tanners, potters, bronzesmiths and, above all, dyers, whose purple cloth carried the city's name. That commercial world shapes its Christian history. Thyatira is one of the Seven Churches addressed in the Book of Revelation, and the New Testament describes Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth whom Paul met at Philippi, as a woman from Thyatira. The excavated area sits in the middle of the modern town, an enclosed archaeological park ringed by shops and apartments. Remains include column shafts and bases, stretches of Roman-era paved street and colonnade, the foundations of a large basilica-plan building, and scattered architectural fragments and inscriptions. The site is small and flat, normally a short stop on a Seven Churches route that also takes in Pergamon and Sardis. Shade is limited, and spring and autumn are more comfortable than the hot inland summer.