Pergamon Asclepion

The Asclepion was one of the three great healing sanctuaries of the ancient world, dedicated to Asclepius and at its height in the second century CE, when Galen - born in Pergamon and later physician in Rome - trained and practised here. Treatment combined the practical and the ritual: patients drank and bathed in the sacred spring, followed diets, exercised, listened to music and theatre in the small odeon, and slept in the incubation rooms so that their dreams could be interpreted by priests as instructions for a cure. A colonnaded sacred way runs into the site from the ancient road, and a vaulted underground passage leads from the courtyard to the round treatment building, with openings in the roof through which voices could be projected. The complex includes a library, latrines and a theatre seating three and a half thousand. It is part of the UNESCO listing for Pergamon and sits well below the acropolis, so it needs its own visit.

History

Founded in the mid-4th century BC, by legend by Archias, a citizen cured at the Asclepieion of Epidaurus, the sanctuary began as a small sacred enclosure and spring shrine; under the Attalids in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC it gained a Doric temple to Hygieia and buildings around the incubation area, where patients slept in hope of healing dreams. Under Hadrian in the 2nd century AD it roughly quadrupled in size, with a colonnaded sacred way, a new gateway, the north stoa, the theatre and the library, and it reached its greatest fame; an earthquake in 175 damaged the colonnades, and by the 3rd century it was declining under further earthquakes and the spread of Christianity (Wikipedia, Asclepieion of Pergamon).

What's there

• The sacred way - the colonnaded approach into the sanctuary.
• The underground passage - the vaulted tunnel to the treatment rooms.
• The sacred spring - the water at the centre of the cure.
• The theatre and library - the sanctuary's public buildings.

When to go

April to June and September to October, in the morning - the site is open and shadeless and Bergama summers are very hot.

Things to know

It is a separate site and a separate ticket from the acropolis above, and the two together make a full day. There is almost no shade. Interpretation on site is limited.

Nearby

The Pergamon acropolis is above the town by cable car; the Red Basilica is in Bergama itself.

Key facts