Tralleis lies a kilometre north of the centre of Aydın, on the plateau just below the southern slope of the Kestane mountains, the ancient Mesogis — close enough that the city is effectively part of a day in town. Only one building still stands: the second-century remains of the gymnasium known locally as Üç Gözler, the three eyes, a type of building that was among the leading institutions of education, sport and culture in the ancient world. A Roman bath, a theatre, an agora and a stadium are among the city's other structures.
Argives were among the founders who settled this fertile ground of the Maeander basin after the Dorian migrations, in the thirteenth century BC, and the name comes from the Luwian word Tralla with a Greek ending meaning the people of that place. The city was under Persian control in the late Archaic and early Classical periods and surrendered without resistance to Alexander in 334 BC, along with Magnesia and Nysa. It then changed hands frequently among the Hellenistic kingdoms, belonging for a long stretch to the Seleucids; Antiochos I refounded it, under the name Seleukeia, to secure the main road along the Maeander.
It struck its own bronze coinage in the third century BC, came under Rome after the Peace of Apameia in 188 BC, and was formally annexed in 133 BC. Backing Mithridates cost it five years of heavy taxation. An earthquake between 27 and 24 BC did serious damage, and after Augustus paid for the recovery the city took the name Caesarea.
Tralleis produced people rather than surviving monuments. In antiquity it was known for the leather and the red pottery it made; the sculptors Apollonios and Tauriskos came from here, and so did Anthemios, one of the two architects of Hagia Sophia. Two world-famous pieces of sculpture, the Farnese Bull and the Young Athlete, came to light here.
Something else found here is older than any of that in its own way. During the building of the İzmir–Aydın railway in 1883 a gravestone appeared belonging to a young man named Seikilos who lived near Tralleis in the first or second century AD, and on it are both the words and the music of a song in Greek. Research established it as the earliest known song. The stone speaks first in its own voice — Seikilos set me up, I am a statue of stone, and my task is to keep his memory alive for ever — and then gives the song: shine while you live, take nothing to heart, life is short and time exacts its price when the day comes. A line records that Seikilos, son of Euterpes, had it made while still alive. Very few songs have come down from antiquity, and mostly in small fragments; this one survives whole, and each syllable of the words carries a note above it. The stone is displayed in the National Museum in Copenhagen.
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).
