This city pre-dates Pergamon and is one of the earliest examples of rigid town planning, almost similar to the system that the Romans developed. It is one of the most important cities to study in terms of the history of urbanism and city planning because of its grid pattern, developed by Hippodamus of Miletus. Only a purely logical mind could have conceived of and constructed a plan to this degree of precision and rigidity. Its basic form consists of a strict pattern of criss-crossing perpendicular streets built on the landscape. What’s especially interesting about the landscape is that it has quite a slope to it, yet the grid is simply laid right over that with terraces compensating for any height differentials.
Why a grid?
Priene was a colonial city with an estimated population around 5000 established by the Greeks around 350 BCE. The logic behind the grid is that it was a quick way to lay out a city instead of slowly letting it grow naturally on its own, for it was designed all at once. Compare this to some Medieval cities which, when allowed to grow organically, take on a more dendritic street pattern. All major streets are aligned on the East/West axis, with the North/South streets being the secondary ones. Like Manhattan, its morphology consists of equally-sized city blocks, sometimes taking up more than 1 depending on the building type to be placed there, such as a market. Priene also features some of the same building types as the other Greek cities we’ve visited so far, such as the theater, agora, stoas, bouleterion, Temple of Athena, residential quarters, gymnasium, and stadium.
One of the highlights of today had to be the theater presentation. It was quite a neat experience to put on part of an ancient Greek play within a Greek theater. It gave me a heightened sense for the life of a typical Priene citizen. Clearly, the theater was integral to this civilization. Built into the hillside to again take advantage of the topography (as I saw in Pergamon) the Greek theater is a bit different from the Roman one in that its shape resembles more of a horseshoe than a semi-circle. As in other Greek theaters it was again dedicated to Dionysius, and each year there were 2 festivals held in his honor – one in March that would ask him for a good harvest for the Spring and one in December that would send him off for the winter.
The Temple of Zeus that we visited also caught my eye. Here was one of the most important and largest Ionic temples built in antiquity. While most of it is still on site in ruins, the reason it is widely regarded is for its exact mathematical proportions. I bet the designer of the temple had fun with this one, because, as in other Greek temples, the part to whole relationships were of immense importance to the success of the building. The embates was the standard module of a Greek temple. This part would establish a whole set of rules for any temple, and could be scaled accordingly to the site’s need. It is a 6x11 temple that has been exactly tuned, like a guitar, to represent the rhythm and harmony the Greeks sought within nature and in their designs. I often try to make a connection between architecture and music, because I think that the more cross-disciplinary our minds work, the better off we’ll be. The rhythm of a colonnade could be said to coincide with a steady drum beat; the idiosyncratic nature of a Frank Gehry structure is as pleasing to the eye as a Miles Davis record is pleasing to the ear. There are connections between these two disciplines and others, although sometimes they are hard to pick out if you can’t wrap your head around thinking about architecture as music.
Location: Didyma, Turkey
The only reason we went to Didyma on this day was to go to the Temple of Apollo, and I would have to say I’m glad we did. Some temples have claimed to be the largest in this or that location, but the temple here is by far one of the largest I have seen. One of the reasons for this is the style it was built in: dipteral. This means that there were two rows of columns that went around the entire perimeter of the structure. These columns are assuredly the largest in antiquity (that we have come across at least). The square bases had to be at least 20’ long, and if you were to come across a smaller temple that was in ruins where the highest drum was at most 5’ off the ground, the drums here are 15’ off the ground IN RUIN! It’s quite an impressive structure, made even more so by the tunnels on either side of the main cella that lead down to the oracle room. As modern visitors to the ruins here at Didyma, we were allowed to enter the oracle room. This is quite strange because no one but the high priests were able to visit this room in antiquity. To think about the millions of travelers to here in antiquity when this temple was functioning that had to respect the spiritual nature of the building and not enter the oracle room, yet we were allowed in with no resistance. What does this tell you about the sacredness of these spaces? Were they that sacred at all that now anyone can visit them? Or has the world of archaeology overtaken the world of polytheism in that modern travelers want to see all parts of a building, regardless of ancient tradition? Is ancient tradition dead, and if so what did it mean if it’s not around today? These are rhetorical questions, some of them trivial and meaningless, but it brings us to the presentation of the day on religion.
The tradition of building temples evolved from the Mycenaeans, who originally just left holy spots on top of mountains for the gods to receive their offerings, most likey because these were the high spots closest to the gods. The temple began to resemble the houses of the Greeks, because that’s where they thought the gods lived. Of course the temple and any statue inside were but a placeholder for the gods, but they actually thought the gods would be pleased and therefore inhabit these structures, thereby protecting the city. As Greek religion lacked a specific dogma or scripture, it was more or less up to the people to govern themselves and receive ‘signs’ from the gods of their approval or displeasure with their activities on Earth. As a result, polytheism wasn’t quite the same in all parts of the ancient world, as Christianity isn’t the same in all parts of the world today. Each god had a specific role or characteristic, and they were seen more as a personification of abstract ideas, but at the same time had human qualities as well.
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