{"id":71438,"date":"2025-06-27T01:00:46","date_gmt":"2025-06-27T05:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/bibleandculture\/?p=71438"},"modified":"2025-06-10T22:21:33","modified_gmt":"2025-06-11T02:21:33","slug":"the-cotton-castle-cliff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/bibleandculture\/2025\/06\/27\/the-cotton-castle-cliff\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cotton Castle Cliff"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/55\/2025\/06\/thumbnail_20250604_160105-1-1.jpg\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-71450\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/55\/2025\/06\/thumbnail_20250604_160105-1-1-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\"><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/55\/2025\/06\/thumbnail_20250604_155307-1.jpg\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-71441\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/55\/2025\/06\/thumbnail_20250604_155307-1-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\"><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/55\/2025\/06\/thumbnail_20250604_155347-1.jpeg\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-71447\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/55\/2025\/06\/thumbnail_20250604_155347-1.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/55\/2025\/06\/thumbnail_20250604_155454-1.jpg\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-71456\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/55\/2025\/06\/thumbnail_20250604_155454-1-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/55\/2025\/06\/thumbnail_20250604_155434-2.jpg\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-71459\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/55\/2025\/06\/thumbnail_20250604_155434-2-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Hierapolis has an unusual natural feature\u2014 calcium carbonate cliffs.\u00a0 \u00a0You can see these cliffs from a great distance on the highway as you are driving down the Lycus Valley.\u00a0 In the 20th century this became a major tourist attraction with hotels built right next to these cliffs. Fortunately, the government intervened, and had them removed.\u00a0 When there is insufficient water cascading down these cliffs, they become brown, so the wise thing to do was to provide such water on an ongoing basis, and thereby keeping Hierapolis a major tourist attraction. It was once again swarming with tourists in early June.\u00a0 The authorities have wisely banned tourists from walking on these slippery cliffs, except for a small designated area.\u00a0 The only other area on earth I know of that is similar is of course the white cliffs of Dover, but that is chalk, not the same as these cliffs.\u00a0 The Turkish word, pamukkale does indeed mean Cotton Castle, and you can tell from the map above how extensive the cliffs stretch on this site.\u00a0 It is well worth seeing.\u00a0 But there is much more to see at this locale, as we have already noted in previous posts. And yes that\u2019s our intrepid guide and old friend Meltem, the best guide in all of Turkiye.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hierapolis has an unusual natural feature\u2014 calcium carbonate cliffs.\u00a0 \u00a0You can see these cliffs from a great distance on the highway as you are driving down the Lycus Valley.\u00a0 In the 20th century this became a major tourist attraction with hotels built right next to these cliffs. Fortunately, the government intervened, and had them removed.\u00a0 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":71456,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15572,15569],"class_list":["post-71438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-no-dover","tag-white-cliffs"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Cotton Castle Cliff<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Hierapolis has an unusual natural feature--- calcium carbonate cliffs.\u00a0 \u00a0You can see these cliffs from a great distance on the highway as you are driving\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" 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