The Gulet Boat Adventures and More: Part Two

On the way to Marmaris our friend Mark Fairchild suggested we stop at Nysa, not to be confused with Nyssa (as in Gregory’s turf in Cappadocia). It is not a Biblical site, but it was once a pretty impressive Greco-Roman city, as you will now see, but first a pit stop at another one of those wonderful truck stops where we bought Magnum bars, Turkish coffee beans, and even zeytinyagi=olive oil…

Here’s a brief summary about the city of Nysa.. and an overview schematic


Nysa was indeed on major trade routes, but as Strabo tells us, it was a famous educational center, hence it’s library, which in its day must have been as impressive as the Celsus library in Ephesos, that other major city on the Meander river. Here is the Roman road into town.

So let’s start with the great theater…

Even more impressive than the seats is the scenae which stood at the back of the stage.

Here’s what we have today….

Here’s the entrance to the theater,

One of the constant impressions is how many of these Greco-Roman towns were extremely hilly. Nysa is one of those. Here is the staircase by the theater up to where the library was.

Here’s a schematic of the library….

Think Celsus library without the marble facade…. here is where many great scholars and writers and rhetoricians studied, including Strabo.

Up a very different hill from the theater is the Senate building and the agora… here’s a quick shot of the agora, but we will focus on the senate building which is still reasonably in tact. Think of it as the town council building.

Here’s the explanation about the senate building….