Ruined!

Location

It's worth seeing but it must have been so much better before

Anyone who's been traveling with me around Italy or Greece would have heard my rant about archealogical ruins being just a pile of rocks. Well At Pamukkale the whole situation is actually quite interesting.

First you have the ancient city of Hierapolis, ruined of course, but thats not to be unexpected for an ancient Hellenistic/Roman city. Next you have travertine pools, formed over thousands of years of calcium rich water running over a ridge. They were virtually ruined in a couple of decades by hotel developments built not near but right on top of the ridge''s edge. The buildings not only stopped water running into the pools but polluted them, turning them a yellow and brown (from their original brilliant white and blue).

In 1996 UNESCO stepped in and declared the areaa natural heritage site and had the hotels demolished but left their foundations. There is a program to restore the water flow due for completion next year. When I visited water was only flowing out of a small canal of two places each day. So now at Hierapolis you not only have ruins of an ancient city but also ruins of a modern tourist blunder. Quite a nice contrast I thought.

As for my birthday I spent half of it on the bus from Pamukkale to Selcuk and the other half in bed with some rather nasty food poisioning. Damn Turkish food!