Milet Ancient City

Miletus, Milet in Turkish, lies near the village of Balat in the Didim district of Aydin Province, on Turkey's western coast. What survives is an ancient Greek city that once stood on a peninsula at the mouth of the Maeander River, in the region the Greeks called Ionia. The river has since filled the bay with silt, and the ruins now sit roughly 10 kilometres from open water. By road the site is about two hours north of Bodrum and two hours south of Izmir. Before Persian rule reached Ionia in the middle of the 6th century BCE, Miletus was among the largest and wealthiest cities in the Greek world.

The coast around it is better known today for its beaches, but the ruins along this stretch draw a steady stream of visitors, and Miletus is one of the largest of them.

The Three Myths of Miletus

The city took its name from Miletos, whose origins are told three different ways.

In Ovid's version he was the son of Apollo and Deione, exiled from Crete by King Minos. He crossed to Asia Minor, founded the city, and married Kyane, daughter of the river god Maeander.

A second version makes Miletos the grandson of Minos and still the son of Apollo. His mother abandoned him at birth in the forest; he was nursed by a wolf and raised by shepherds. Years later he became an object of desire to Minos, who had no idea of his origins, and fled to Caria, where he married Idothea, daughter of King Eurytus.

In the third version his mother is Areia, who abandoned him, and he was raised by his grandfather Cleochus. He grew up handsome enough to attract Minos, fled from him here too, and went first to the island of Samos, where he founded a first Miletus, and then to Caria, where he founded a second city of the same name.

All three versions begin in Crete, which lines up with the real Bronze Age contact between this site and Minoan Crete.

The History of Miletus

Miletus was one of the most important Greek cities in Anatolia. Ionian Greeks settled the peninsula around 1000 BCE on ground that was already long occupied: there was a Minoan presence around 2000 BCE, and Neolithic material from the fourth millennium BCE. The position at the mouth of the Maeander gave the city several harbours and made it a trading point for goods moving between the Aegean and the Anatolian interior. The same river eventually destroyed that advantage. The bay silted up, the harbours closed, and the coastline moved west.

Written records begin in the 7th century BCE, when Miletus was a leading member of the Ionian League, a confederation of twelve cities that also included Ephesus, Priene and Samos. It was the home of Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes, the three thinkers known collectively as the Milesian School. Through the 6th century BCE the city ran a large navy and a wide network of colonies, particularly around the Black Sea. That period ended in 494 BCE, when the Persians crushed the Ionian Revolt at the naval battle of Lade and sacked the city. Miletus recovered enough in the early Byzantine period to become the seat of an archbishop, but Arab raids and the closing of the harbour finished it off, and the area reverted to farmland.

What Remains at Miletus Today

Enough of the city is standing to fill a couple of hours. These are the main structures, roughly in the order most visitors reach them.

The Theatre

The theatre is one of the largest in Anatolia. It began in the 4th century BCE, was enlarged during the Hellenistic period, and was rebuilt by the Romans to hold around 15,000 spectators. The surviving structure is 140 metres wide and 30 metres high; the upper gallery is gone, but with it the building once reached about 40 metres. The seating, the stage and the orchestra are all still legible. In its working life the theatre faced water: spectators looked out over the Theatre Harbour with the West Agora on the far side. The whole of that bay is now dry land.

The Faustina Baths

The baths were built in honour of Faustina the Younger, wife of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, in the later 2nd century CE following the earthquake of 178, and were rebuilt again in the 3rd century. The palaestra measures about 77 metres a side, and the changing hall running along it is some 80 metres long with thirteen rooms off it. The frigidarium, tepidarium and caldarium can all be walked through, along with sections of surviving vaulting.

The Bouleuterion

The council house was built between 175 and 164 BCE at the expense of two Milesian brothers, Timarchus and Heracleides. Eighteen rows of seats held somewhere between 800 and 1,500 councillors, depending on which estimate you follow. Some of the original seating and the speaker's podium are still in place, and the courtyard in front, 32 by 35 metres, was ringed with Doric colonnades.

The Byzantine Fortress

The Byzantine fortress was not built beside the theatre but on top of it, using the upper rows of seats as its foundation. Medieval travellers called the place Ta Palatia, the palaces, after the ruins spread out below. The walk up is short and gives the best overview of the site.

Church of St Michael and the Bishop's Palace

The church is a three-aisled basilica of roughly 27 by 13 metres, rebuilt in the early 7th century CE over the remains of a Hellenistic temple of Dionysus. All three aisles can be traced, along with the bases of many columns. The Bishop's Palace stands to the north, with several sections of wall still up.

Lion Harbour

The Lion Harbour was the city's principal anchorage until the silt closed it. Its centrepiece was the Large Harbour Monument, put up in the 1st century BCE and standing around 18 metres: a monumental tripod set on lions, carved with tritons, dolphins and ship prows. The base and some of the reliefs are still there. A smaller pyramidal monument was added nearby in the Flavian period.

Capito Baths

Among the better-preserved buildings on the site, the Capito Baths were built in the 1st century CE by Gnaeus Vergilius Capito, procurator of Asia under Claudius. The complex runs roughly 96 by 40 metres and includes a palaestra with a swimming pool, a circular domed sweat room, and the usual sequence of cold, warm and hot rooms.

North Agora and Ionic Stoa

The North Agora is the oldest of the city's three market squares and was in use from the Archaic period onward. The stoa alongside it, about 100 metres long and 14 deep, went up in the mid-1st century CE; the rooms behind its colonnade were shops.

Nymphaeum

The nymphaeum was an ornamental fountain on three tiers, over 20 metres wide, built under Claudius in the 1st century CE and dedicated to the nymphs, the minor nature goddesses of Greek religion. Nine niches on the lower level held statues and two basins caught the water. The top tier was added in the middle of the 3rd century under Gordian III. Several of its statues are now in the site museum.

South Agora

The South Agora was laid out in the 3rd century BCE under Antiochus I and measures 127 by 161 metres, which makes it one of the largest market squares in the Greek world. Doric colonnades ran around it, with rows of shops behind the eastern stoa and a warehouse over 160 metres long down the western side.

Visiting the Site Today

The ground is flat and open and the circuit is easy to walk. Five minutes down the road in Balat, the Miletus Museum holds the finds from the excavations, including sculpture taken from the nymphaeum and the Faustina Baths. Because the site is a short drive from the marinas at Didim and Bodrum, it also works as a shore day for anyone exploring Turkey's coast by boat: the sea that Miletus lost has only moved a few kilometres west.