Nysa, an important city of ancient Caria, stands on the Aydın–Denizli road thirty kilometres east of Aydın and three kilometres north-west of the town of Sultanhisar. Its site is worth understanding before you walk it: a swiftly flowing river cut a deep gorge straight through the rocky plateau, so the city was built as two halves on either side, joined by three bridges, with buildings, streets and squares carried on vaulted substructures where the ground fell away.
What is known of its founding comes from Strabo, the traveller and geographer of the age of Augustus, and from the historian Stephanus: the city was founded in the Hellenistic period, in the first half of the third century BC, by Antiochos I Soter, son of Seleucus. Further building was added in the Roman period, and Nysa reached its height in cultural terms under Roman rule. What it was known for above all was education — Strabo himself was schooled here.
The gymnasium, where the young were trained in mind and body, measures about 165 by 70 metres and must have been smaller in Strabo's time. The library beside it has two floors and is, according to the provincial directorate, the best-preserved ancient library in Anatolia after the Library of Celsus at Ephesus.
West of the stream bed stand the gymnasium and the stadium; north of them the library and a Byzantine building; north-east of the library, on the eastern slope at the centre of the city, the theatre, which seated ten thousand and is well preserved, its seating running somewhat beyond a semicircle. East of the stream bed are the agora, the council building and the Roman baths. The agora, east of the bouleuterion, is a market place of 89 by 105 metres made up of halls ringed on all four sides by columns. The best-preserved building of all is the bouleuterion, which Strabo describes as the gerontikon, the council of elders: rectangular outside, with semicircular seating inside. The stadium, about 192 by 44 metres, has been badly damaged by flood water, and a tunnel also survives.
Nothing survives of the Hellenistic city wall that once ringed Nysa, though traces of Byzantine walls can be seen here and there. The necropolis lies about two kilometres west, at modern Salavatlı, along the road to Akharaka, the sanctuary of the ancient city.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Aydın as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 8.2 °C in January to 28.4 °C in July; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in April, May, September and October; rainfall is heaviest in December (126 mm) and lightest in August (6 mm). Long-term means for 1940-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
Visiting hours
- Hours
- 08:30 - 17:30
