6/27 Pergamon, Turkey

I made it to Asia! (well, technically Asia Minor but I don’t care). Turkey definitely has a different feel than Greece. For one, I can almost sound out the words here instead of completely giving up when I tried to do the same for Greece. Turkey also seems poorer off economically than Greece, at least aesthetically. I realize Greece is going through some turbulent times in their history, but Turkey still hasn’t the development I was expecting. Nonetheless, the first city that we visited today was the ancient acropolis of Pergamon. It was established around the 3^rd century BCE, about the time of Alexander the Great. Up until the 1^st century BCE, there were a series of very wealthy kingdoms that existed in this part of the world, and they did in fact co-exist peacefully with the Roman Empire. They eventually did bequeath their kingdom to the Romans to avoid a major conflict and potential destruction of their culture. Because of this gesture, the Romans continued to build and add to the city, which exhibits a mix of Roman and Hellenistic styles today. The interesting thing to me about this site was that the culture respected the mainland Greeks as well, and attempted to model themselves after the Acropolis in Athens, which is manifested here through a series of structures similar to that which is found across the Aegean Sea. It had the advantage of being built on a steeply sloping site, which gave it layers of terraces, a military outlook, and easily defensible structures. Eventually, though during Roman times the town grew so large that it began to inhabit and spread across the plain below the acropolis. Its urban fabric does an adequate job of following the topographic lines of the site, as opposed to Priene, which we are seeing in a few days that, regardless of changes in elevation, features a strict grid pattern.

There is an aspect to this particular trip to Turkey that I have not experienced yet. I am astonished at how far reaching the Greek and Roman cultures were. The system of logistics that these cultures had set up some two thousand years ago is mind boggling. To be able to quarry stone, move materials over thousands of miles (by boat or land), and construct these beautiful works of architecture seems almost incomprehensible. Structures like the Temple of Athena, which was built out of andesite and faces an open plain to the west, are only a slight part of this vast network. As with many of the Greek temples, it attempts to relate itself to the horizon by having unobstructed views to the landscape. Its entry sequence also imitates the Acropolis in Athens somewhat as the way you first encounter the Temple is from an angle, not straight on as in typical Greek fashion. This non-orthogonal appropriation of space was a hallmark of Greek design: it allows you to develop a relationship with the building first, instead of being forced on a straight axis right into the temple. A number of stoas were also built around the temple, each 2 stories high, terminating at the appropriate distance from the temple so as to give unobstructed views of the surrounding area, and were interconnected to the library on site as well. After the Library of Alexander, which has not been excavated, this is the earliest library of which we have ruins as it was built in the 3^rd century BCE.

The other structure that caught my eye and relates to this idea of the logistical network is the Temple of Trajan, which is a Roman structure, built of the typical regal Corinthian order. There are a couple of amazing features of this structure. It catches my eye again because it is of the same order we see 3000 miles away from Rome, but more so because of the style in which it was built. Hadrian, who constructed it, could have built the platform the temple stands on out of concrete; they had the technology. Keep in mind this structure was built in the 2^nd century AD. Yet, it was built in a style reminiscent of a 6^th century BCE structure! It was probably Hadrian’s extreme respect for the Greek culture which allowed him the patience to build a structure that probably took longer to construct than it would have it were to be built using the more advanced technology of the day. Instead he decides to be true to their culture and build it like they would have nearly 800 years earlier, a stunning achievement in cross-culture awareness.

But wait! There’s more!

In order to construct this temple, a platform had to be built in order to get it to be at the appropriate height. So to show off their technological prowess, the Romans built a series of barrel vaults that comprised an entire network underneath the temple. This work of civil engineering definitely exhibits the Roman building style: rounded arches that are stretched out along the length of the temple, and a duality of function: to support the temple above and to create space below that could have been used as a storage facility or some other use.

You could also expect to find a theater at Pergamon. This one in particular was the steepest in antiquity and could hold up to 10,000 people. What was interesting about this structure was that it was both enlarged during the Roman times and did not have any scenery, allowing full unobstructed views of the landscape. This might have been a result of the desire to maintain that all-important relationship with nature, as previously described, or it might have been a function of the types of performances held here. Either way, it is quite an impressive structure that also features a small Temple of Dionysius at the bottom. This was placed here so that as you were approaching the theater from the road below, you could see the temple and its relation to the overall complex, just as Dionysius has a relation to the world of theater, entertainment, and debauchery.

One building type that I haven’t yet discussed that we came across is the gymnasium. It is built on three different levels for use by three different age groups and wasn’t designed exclusively for exercise. Rather, both intellectual and physical activities would take place here, as the Greeks found it important to exercise both mind and body simultaneously to keep both parts working in harmony.

Dedicated to the God of Healing, Asclepius, the Asclepion was primarily an early form of a hospital dedicated to keeping the population of Pergamon in good health. Of course the concept of healing had to have a deity to go along with it, and we can still see remnants of Asclepius today, as his symbol was the snake wrapping around a staff. The whole area of Pergamon was really a functioning early metropolis. None of the aspects of daily life were taken for granted and each had its place and specific function. We can look back today and call them somewhat ‘primitive’ because all of their structures were built primarily out of stone, a Neolithic-looking building material that gives each building here more of a crude feel than it deserves. This was a thriving city: even the hospitals had theater spaces for music and performances, stoas for commercial use, and a sacred spring in which to take baths. At the same time, though, the way they treated their patients was based off of knowledge that is definitely primitive when looked at through a modern medicine lens. Hippocrates looked at the body in such theoretical terms that he thought the body’s 4 temperaments were responsible for balancing out the human body and for you to remain in good health. So we have a dynamic here of a well-cultivated intelligent, democratic society that still relied on superstition and bad science most of the time. But we should give them a break; it was our earliest attempts at civilization and I think they got it mostly right.

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I’m sitting on a bus somewhere outside of Pergamon, Turkey. Having just visited the main Acropolis and Asclepieion (hospital) of the area, I’m staggered at the scope and scale of the ancient world and their ability to logistically organize vast parts of the globe and unify them into a cohesive whole. The distance between Rome and the west coast of Turkey is equivalent to a plane ride from New York to Los Angeles. Yet, we see the same building typologies here that we see in the ‘mother land’ of Rome. The Temple of Trajan, for instance, (also dedicated to Zeus) is a prime example and is also a fascinating building for another reason which I will mention later on. It was built during the reign of Hadrian, somewhere in the 2^nd century AD and similar to a temple of Zeus that we saw in Athens. The order is Corinthian, the formal expression basically the same as any temple you would see in Rome, yet it is some 2500 miles away. I can’t even begin to describe how difficult and therefore purposeful a journey for the emperor Hadrian must have been around this time. If he did in fact come here to Turkey and either approve of this building type or be involved in some other capacity, one would have to think that he was involved in traveling to other parts of the Roman Empire which were under his control at the time of his reign. Spain, England, North Africa, parts of the Middle East, Germany, France were all at one time under the umbrella of that city in central Italy. The vastness of this Empire is what astonishes me sometimes. Without modern transportation, infrastructure, or communication, you wonder sometimes how it was able to grow this large. I suspect that they had more time to think about and deploy the logistics, rather than spend their time on facebook or google.

Another fascinating aspect of the Temple of Zeus in Pergamon is the style in which it was built. At the time of its construction, Hadrian’s Villa had already been in existence and the Romans knew quite a lot about concrete and the ability to deploy it in any number of ways. Domes and other various shell-like spatial arrangements had been experimented on in Hadrian’s Villa and were at the fingertips of the emperor. Yet, in a nod to the Greeks and with a great respect for their culture after they had bequeathed their city to the Romans, Hadrian constructed the temple in the style essentially of the Parthenon: by stacking stones on top of one another. You say, so what? The Parthenon was constructed around 440 BCE. The Temple of Zeus was constructed in the 2^nd century AD, 600 years AFTER the Parthenon. To put an equivalent perspective on this time gap, it would be like if we constructed churches today like they did in the 1400’s. what if we built one of those large Gothic churches with its flying buttresses, hand-made stained glass windows, and ridiculously tall naves. It just wouldn’t be done today; it would be unheard of. This building style says again to me how much respect the Romans had for classical Greek culture. Now the construction method was not EXACTLY the same. The Parthenon was built out of solid marble. The Temple of Zeus in Pergamon was built of local stone with a marble revetment. At least, the base was constructed this way; the columns are still solid carved marble and in a different order (style).

I am also starting to formulate a question in my head about the world in general. Do I prefer natural beauty or man-made beauty? When I look at all of the beautiful places that we have visited over the last 6 weeks, I have seen mountain ranges, hillsides, valleys, sunsets, beaches, and rivers. Yet I have also seen townscapes built into the land; incredible spatial volumes; meticulous building methods that boggle the mind as to how detailed they are; exquisite paintings, frescoes, and statues from any number of masters of their craft from ancient to Renaissance times; and more ancient ruins than I can count on my two hands. I have seen a little from Column A and a little from Column B mixed together (as in the case of both the sunset over Florence and the Athens surrounding townscape. As an architect I have been trained to recognize those elements which are beautifully man-made. Yet, as a citizen of the world, I am startled to see the natural beauty that remains in the world. At this very moment we are passing a mountain range with its vast rolling hills, trees dotting the tops, and the very last flickers of sun touching the tops of the mountains. I wish sometimes I could capture the beauty of these scenes in pictures, but I feel that they do not do the scene justice sometimes. It remains to be seen how camera technology will develop, but there is something to be said about moving past a beautiful scene and seeing it constantly change before your eyes as opposed to seeing it still on a computer screen or framed picture. To be able to move around these enormous formations of nature and perceive the foreground moving at a much higher speed than the seemingly glacial background is a part of our experience as human beings that have to be among the most awe-inspiring.

On the other hand, entering into a space such as St. Peter’s Church in Rome with its golden inscriptions, sculpture and painting decorated walls, and complete vertical expansion of the typical basilica form inspires one to revel in the capabilities of the human mind to create such structures. Now of course beauty here is so entangled with the subjective experience that the two can never be separated. What is beautiful and heavenly to one may be just an ugly, over-decorated, ecclesiastical nightmare to another. I, for one, much rather prefer those churches whose geometrical experiments are beyond what I can comprehend rather than staring at walls covered in mosaics and paintings; but that’s just me. Nevertheless, the overall debate remains; what is more beautiful: nature or man-made structures. Could it be a little bit of both? Can’t I have both? Can nature create something ugly? If it exists, it was meant to look like that and can’t control whether it is beautiful or not. We, on the other hand, as rational, logical and emotional beings can control the output of our designs. Since the beginning of civilization we have produced a lot of reprehensibly ugly buildings and a good number of ones that are regarded by the general population to be ‘beautiful’. Which do I prefer? I’ve only just started this discussion with myself. Which do you prefer?