Priene Ancient City

Priene lies under the cliffs of Mount Mycale, beside the village of Gullubahce in the Soke district of Aydin Province. It is the most complete surviving plan of a small Greek city: a grid of streets laid out in the 4th century BC, never built over afterwards, and left several kilometres inland when the sea it was designed to face silted away.

Setting and Geography

The city was built on steep slopes and terraces running from what was then sea level to 380 metres at the top of the escarpment. It looked out over the Latmian Gulf, the deep bay that once cut inland here and served two other Ionian cities, Miletus and Myus. Priene sits roughly 25 km from Miletus and 15 km from Soke.

That gulf was also the city's undoing. The Maeander river, today the Buyuk Menderes, carried enough silt to close one harbour after another. The first Greek settlement here was founded around 1000 BC by colonists from Thebes; earthquakes around 700 BC and the advancing shoreline forced the city to move more than once, and what visitors see now was laid out on a fresh site in the middle of the 4th century BC. Even that did not hold. The bay filled in completely, and the ruins today overlook cotton fields and orchards.

History: Greeks, Alexander and Rome

Priene was a member of the Ionian League and later of the Athenian-led Delian League, but it never carried much political weight; its population is estimated at four to five thousand. Its standing rested on planning and architecture instead, and on a democratic constitution modelled on the Athenian one, with an assembly of citizens and a council that met in the bouleuterion.

The rebuilding of the mid-4th century BC began under the Persian satrap Mausolus and continued after Alexander the Great took the region in 334 BC. Alexander offered to pay for the Temple of Athena on condition that it be dedicated in his name; it was, in 323 BC, and the dedicatory inscription is now in the British Museum.

Rome absorbed western Anatolia in 129 BC with the creation of the province of Asia, and Priene continued under Roman and then Byzantine rule, acquiring churches and a bishopric. As the harbour closed for good, its merchants left first and most of the remaining population followed them to Miletus. The town was abandoned rather than destroyed, which is exactly why it survived: no medieval or modern settlement was ever built on top of it.

What Survives

Temple of Athena Polias

The temple stood on a high terrace north of the main street, reached by a broad stairway. It was a hexastyle peripteral building in the Ionic order, designed by Pytheos, the architect of the Mausoleum at Halikarnassos, and its proportions were treated in antiquity as the reference example of Ionic design. Several of its columns have been re-erected and are visible from a long way off.

The Bouleuterion

Beside the temple terrace is the council chamber: a near-square hall with stone benches rising on three sides around a small altar, once covered by a wooden roof that gave it good acoustics. The seating and the speaker's platform are still in place, which makes it one of the best-preserved council chambers anywhere in the Greek world.

The Prytaneion

Adjoining the bouleuterion, between the temple and the main street, the prytaneion housed the city's officials and the sacred hearth. State dinners, receptions for envoys and religious ceremonies were held in its rooms and halls.

The Agora and the Baths

The agora occupied the centre of the grid, enclosed on three sides by colonnades with shops behind them and a sacred stoa along its northern edge. Roman-period baths stood next to the gymnasium in the lower town, where the walls of the schoolroom still carry names scratched into the stone by students.

The Theatre

The theatre sits on a terrace above the main street and kept its Hellenistic form rather than being rebuilt on Roman lines, which is rare. Five marble armchairs stand in the front row, the reserved seats of civic dignitaries, and an altar of Dionysus faces the stage. Because the auditorium was never enlarged, the relationship between stage, orchestra and seating can be read here almost exactly as a Greek architect laid it out.

Sanctuaries and the Stadium

Above the theatre, on one of the highest terraces, is the Sanctuary of Demeter and Kore, with a pit for offerings poured to the underworld gods. Below the residential quarter, at the southern edge of the grid, lie the stadium and the lower gymnasium, laid along the only flat ground the site allows.

Houses and Water Supply

The residential blocks are what set Priene apart. Houses opened off narrow stepped lanes into private courtyards, and about a third of them had indoor toilets, unusual for the period. Springs on Mount Mycale were captured and piped into a reservoir at the top of the city, which fed the streets below through clay pipes.

Visiting Priene

Late spring and early autumn are the easier seasons. The site is steep, largely unshaded and starts with a climb from the car park, so proper shoes and water matter more here than at most ruins. Signage on site is thin, and it is worth reading up beforehand, because what makes Priene remarkable is the street plan as a whole rather than any single monument - this is where the Hippodamian grid can be read in full.

By sea, the closest approaches are the marinas at Kusadasi and Didim, each within about an hour by road. Priene is one of the few ancient cities where the coastline has shifted far enough to redraw the map completely, so guests on a gulet cruise along the Turkey coast often break the passage at Didim and drive inland to stand in a harbour town with no water in sight.