Bergama Asklepion Archaeological Site

In the 4th century BC a healing centre was founded outside the acropolis of Pergamon in honour of Asklepios, god of medicine. With its advanced architectural plan and its treatments, it became the most important healing centre of western Anatolia. What survives today mostly belongs to the rebuilding ordered by Emperor Hadrian in the 2nd century AD.

Pilgrims approached along the Via Tecta, a kilometre-long covered sacred way whose last stretch was lined with columns. At its end stand a monumental gateway, a library on the right and a temple of Zeus Asklepios on the left. Beyond lies a great courtyard surrounded by columned galleries, with a theatre of 3,500 seats in the north-west corner, a large banquet hall and the round treatment building at the south-east. In the west part are sacred springs, the foundations of an early temple and the sleeping rooms.

We know how patients were treated from the orator Aelius Aristides, who was cured here and described it in his "Hieroi Logoi": sleep induced to receive dreams, the sound of water, mud cures, healing waters, cupping, fasting and feasting regimens, therapy and music. Pergamon was also the home town of the physician Galen, the father of pharmacy, who cared for gladiators and Roman rulers here.