Nysa
Idyllic city ruins
Built with engineering ingenuity along an inland ravine above the valley of the classical Meander River, Büyük Menderes to the Turks, Nysa is an idyllic country site which powerfully evokes the golden age of provincial antiquity. The enormous theatre, which straddles the ravine, looks down to the green flatlands of the Meander. Below the theatre are terraced olive groves, a stadium, and a vaulted tunnel which served to drain the ravine at times of seasonal inundation; it was also used to flood the arena so that famous naval battles could be re-enacted.
Not many people get to Nysa, though anybody making for Pamukkale/Hierapolis or Aphrodisias would be foolish to exclude it. Nysa cries out as a picnic site, perhaps amidst the poppies and arum lilies which grow by the semi-circular seating of the second-century elders’ chamber, or bouleterion. There is more shade on the west side of the ravine where cattle often graze among the ruins of the library, a great seat of learning in the blessed centuries before Rome fell and raiders from Arabia overran these lands.
A sunken pathway leads down to the valley town of Sultanhisar from the west of the agora.
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