Magnesia Archaeological Site

Magnesia ad Maeandrum lies in the province of Aydın, in Tekin village near Ortaklar on the road to Söke. According to legend and ancient writers, it was founded by the Magnetes, a people from Thessaly, who landed on the shore of what was then a bay, following an oracle of Apollo and their leader Leukippos. The earliest Magnesia stood by the Meander river, but its exact position is unknown.

Around 400 BC, after the river's shifting bed brought epidemics and the threat of the Persians called for a safer site, the Magnetes refounded the city at its present location beside the Gümüşçay stream, on the site of the Temple of Artemis Leukophryene. It passed to the Seleucids and then to the Pergamon kingdom, remained important under Rome and became a bishopric in Byzantine times.

Magnesia was a walled city of about 1.5 kilometres across, laid out on a grid of streets, and it held a strong commercial and strategic position between Priene, Ephesus and Tralleis. It suffered little destruction, partly because floods and rainwater from the mountain covered it with a protective layer of silt. That is why this is such a promising site for archaeology.