Red Basilica

The Kızıl Avlu was built in the second century CE, under Hadrian, as a temple to Egyptian deities - Serapis, Isis and Harpocrates - whose cults had spread widely through the Roman world. The scale is the first thing: brick walls close to twenty metres high, still standing, enclosing a hall that held a colossal cult statue, flanked by two round towers, and the whole complex raised on a platform. Underneath, the Selinus river was channelled through a vaulted tunnel so that the temple could be built directly over it, and that tunnel still carries the river through the middle of Bergama today. In the Byzantine period a basilica dedicated to Saint John was inserted into the hall - Pergamon is one of the seven churches addressed in Revelation - and one of the round towers now serves as a mosque, so the building has been in religious use, in one form or another, for close to nineteen centuries.

History

No record gives its date, but its sculpture and building methods point to the first half of the 2nd century AD, and its massive red brick, unique in Asia Minor but common in Italy, suggests a Roman architect sent by a very rich patron, most likely the emperor Hadrian, a known devotee of the Egyptian gods; the temple, for Isis and Serapis and perhaps other Egyptian gods, stood in a walled precinct built over the River Selinus. At some point in the Christian era it was gutted by fire, and in the 5th century a church was built inside its shell; the church was probably wrecked when the Arab general Maslamah ibn Abd al-Malik sacked the city in 716-717, and after Pergamon fell to the Turks in 1336 the building became a mosque (Wikipedia, Red Basilica).

What's there

• The brick hall - twenty-metre walls still standing.
• The round towers - the flanking drums, one now a mosque.
• The river tunnel - the Selinus channelled beneath the platform.
• The Byzantine insertion - the church built inside the temple.

When to go

April to June and September to October. Mornings; the interior is roofless and offers no shade.

Good to know

It is a shell - impressive in scale, bare in detail, with restoration ongoing and parts fenced. An hour covers it. It is a separate stop from the acropolis and the Asclepion.

Nearby

The Pergamon acropolis is above the town; the Asclepion is on the other side of Bergama.

Key facts