6 Best Sights in The Sea of Marmara and the North Aegean, Turkey

The most dramatic of the remains of Pergamum are at the Acropolis. Take a smooth, 15-minute ride on the teleferik, which includes sweeping views on its way up the hill, or follow signs pointing the way to the 6-km (4-mile) road to the top, where you can park. After entering through the Royal Gate, bear right and proceed counterclockwise around the site.

At the summit, the partially restored, 2nd-century AD Temple of Trajan is the very picture of an ancient ruin, with burnished white-marble pillars high above the valley of the Bergama Çayı (Selinus River). Nearby are the ruins of the famous Library (Atheneum), built by Eumenes II (197 BC–159 BC) and containing 200,000 scrolls. On the terrace below, you can see the scant remains of the Temple of Athena.

Climb down through a stone tunnel to reach the Great Theater, carved into the steep slope west of the terrace that holds the Temple of Athena. On a nearby terrace, the Altar of Zeus was once among the grandest monuments in the Greek world. If you're prepared for a long and rather steep descent, there's more to see on the slope leading down toward the town.

Written about in Homer's epic, the Iliad, and long thought to be a figment of the Greek poet's imagination, Troy was, nevertheless, found and subsequently excavated in the 1870s by Heinrich Schliemann. Although the wooden horse outside is a modern nod to Homer's epics, the city walls are truly ancient.

The richness of your experience at Troy will depend on your own knowledge (or imagination) or the knowledge and English-language skills of a guide. You might find the site highly evocative, with its remnants of massive, rough-hewn walls and its strategic views over the coastal plains—where the battles of the Trojan War were supposedly fought—to the sea. Or you might consider it an unimpressive row of trenches with piles of earth and stone.

A site plan shows the general layout of the city, which is surprisingly small, and marks the beginning of a signposted path leading to key features from several historical periods. The best-preserved features are from the Roman city, with its bouleuterion (council chamber), the site's most complete structure, and small theater.

The hilltop Acropolis measures about five square city blocks. Founded about 1000 BC by Aeolian Greeks, the city was successively ruled by Lydians, Persians, Pergamenes, Romans, and Byzantines, until Sultan Orhan Gazi (ruled 1324–62) took it over for the Ottomans in 1330. Aristotle is said to have spent time here in the 4th century BC, and St. Paul stopped en route to Miletus in about AD 55.

You're best off leaving your car on one of the wider streets and making your way on foot up the steep, cobbled lanes to the top, where you'll be rewarded with sensational views of the coastline and, in the distance, the Greek island of Lesbos, whose citizens were the original settlers of Assos. At the summit is the site of the Temple of Athena (circa 530 BC), which has splendid sea views but has been somewhat clumsily restored. A more modern addition, right before the entrance to the ruins, is the Murad Hüdavendigâr Camii, a mosque built in the late 14th century.

This is believed to have been one of the world's first full-service health clinics. The name is a reference to Asklepios, god of medicine and recovery, whose snake and staff are now the symbol of modern medicine. In the center's heyday in the 2nd century AD, patients were prescribed such treatments as fasting, colonic irrigation, and running barefoot in cold weather.

The entrance to the complex is at the column-lined Sacred Way, once the main street connecting the Asklepion to Pergamum's Acropolis. Follow it for about a city block into a small square and through what was once the main gate to the temple precinct. Immediately to the right is the library, a branch of the one at the Acropolis. Nearby are pools that were used for mud and sacred water baths, fed by several sacred springs. A subterranean passageway leads down to the cellar of the Temple of Telesphorus, where the devout would pray themselves into a trance and record their dreams upon waking; later, a resident priest would interpret the dreams to determine the nature of the treatment the patient required.

The Red Basilica is named for the red bricks from which it's constructed. You can't miss it on the road to and from the Acropolis—it's right at the bottom of the hill, in the old part of the city. This was the last pagan temple constructed in Pergamum: when Christianity was declared the state religion in the 4th century, it was converted into a basilica dedicated to St. John. Egyptian deities were worshipped here, and an 27-foot cult statue of the lion-headed goddess Sekhmet has recently been reconstructed. The main building—whose walls remain, but not the roof—is fenced off for restoration, but you can still walk around the site and see the "before" and "after" of the work in progress. One of the two towers has also been restored and has some displays inside; the other tower is used as a mosque.

The eastern gate to the ancient city was built in honor of a visit by the Roman emperor Hadrian in AD 120 and is among the best-preserved remnants of the thick, sturdy fortifications that once encircled İznik. Some of the original inscriptions, marble reliefs, and friezes remain intact. Outside the gray stone and faded brick gate is a leafy graveyard and the city's small but technically impressive aqueduct.