Gordion

Gordion was the capital of Phrygia, and it carries two of the more durable stories in classical tradition - the Gordian knot that Alexander is said to have cut, and Midas, who was a real Phrygian king as well as a legend. It was inscribed by UNESCO in 2023. The site has three parts: the citadel mound with its excavated gate, megaron buildings and terrace complex; the museum, holding furniture, bronzes and finds from the excavations that Pennsylvania has run here since the 1950s; and the tumuli, of which around a hundred dot the plain. The great one, Tumulus MM, is fifty metres high, and a tunnel driven into it lets you walk to the burial chamber at its heart - a room of juniper and pine logs built around 740 BCE, the oldest standing wooden structure known anywhere, which held a man of about sixty, probably Midas's father or Midas himself, laid out with bronze vessels and inlaid furniture.

History

Gordion, where the Sakarya and Porsuk rivers meet and the road from Lydia to Assyria crossed the Sangarius, was lived in from about 2300 BC to the 4th century AD and again in the 13th and 14th centuries; it came under Hittite influence in the Middle Bronze Age and was part of the Hittite Empire in the Late. Newcomers with Balkan links, possibly the Brygians, arrived in the Early Iron Age, and in the 10th and 9th centuries BC the Phrygians walled the citadel with a great gate, still ten metres high, built megarons with some of the earliest pebble mosaics, and around 850 BC raised Tumulus W, the first known tumulus burial in Anatolia. A fire around 800 BC sealed the eastern part of the citadel under the rebuilding that followed, preserving it so well that Gordion is the type site of Phrygian civilisation (Wikipedia, Gordion).

The main sights

• The wooden chamber - the eighth-century BCE tomb inside the tumulus.
• The citadel mound - gate, megarons and terrace buildings.
• The museum - furniture, bronzes and the excavation record.
• The tumuli field - burial mounds across the plain.

When to go

April to June and September to October. Mornings; the plain is exposed, hot in summer and bitterly windy in winter.

Practical notes

The tumulus tunnel is low, damp and confined - not for the claustrophobic - and photography inside may be restricted. The citadel is foundations rather than architecture. Little shade; a car is the practical access.

Nearby

Polatlı is the nearest town; Ankara and the Museum of Anatolian Civilisations are 90 km east.

Key facts