Priene, Miletus and Didyma

Three Ionian Cities On The Silted Meander Plain, Visited As One Day; All On The UNESCO Tentative List, With The Temple Of Apollo At Didyma Among The Largest Greek Temples Ever Attempted · Soke, Aydin

The river Meander silted up a whole gulf, and three of the great cities of Ionia were left stranded inland by it. They are strung along forty kilometres south of Kusadasi and are done as one day, in that order. Priene is the best-preserved Hellenistic grid city anywhere - laid out on a slope in regular blocks, with a council chamber so intact you can sit where the councillors sat, and a temple that Alexander paid to finish. Miletus was the richest of them, the home of Thales and of the man who invented the grid plan Priene is built on, and its theatre still seats fifteen thousand in a marshy plain where the harbour used to be. Didyma was never a city at all but an oracle, and the temple of Apollo they started there was so enormous it was never finished - three of its hundred and twenty columns stand to full height and the scale is hard to take in. The three are one long day and nobody sensibly does one.

Gullubahce Mahallesi, Priene Oren Yeri, Soke, Soke, Aydin, Turkiye

All three are ticketed separately and keep daytime hours with an earlier winter close. Miletus floods in winter and spring and parts of the site can be under water for weeks, which is normal rather than a closure. Didyma sits in the middle of modern Didim and is the easiest to reach late. Check all three before planning a single day around them.

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