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.

What you actually see

• 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.

Honest expectations

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.