From Perga, we travel to Side (southwest of Antalya)
a Greek city founded in the 7th century BC.
Fig 30 shows a restoration in progress. All the
stones have been identified and sorted (see the
various piles on left). The reconstruction includes
several columns of the temple. The sections are
drilled and pinned together without visible evidence
of the work. The remainder of the columns
will not be installed due to cost. However, the
visitor gains a sense of size of the original temple
from the limited reconstruction.
Nearby in Aspendos, there is the Greek theater
from 155 BC which seats 12,000 (Fig 31). It is
considered the best preserved amphitheater from
antiquity. It was pillaged by the Romans and later
used as a caravansee and the stage house was
a palace. Following its restoration, a summer
International Opera and Ballet Festival has been
held here each summer since 1994.
Our next visit in Turkey is to GORDION (5 on
map) near modern day Yassihüyük, southwest of
Ankara in central Anatolia. Gordion was the fortress
city of King Midas from the Phrygian empire
and the site of Alexander the Great cutting the
Gordion Knot. It has been nominated as a World
Heritage site.
Excavations have been underway since the
1950s under the direction of the University of
Pennsylvania to undercover the city that had
been buried for over 2,000 years (http://sites.
museum.upenn.edu/gordion/). Fig 32 shows the
entrance to the city in 2012. The approximately
33-foot high walls shown were part of the entrance.
The walls were likely twice as high and
formed the exterior walls of buildings. When
66 | Masonry Design
originally constructed, the walls were covered
with a mud plaster coating and lime white wash.
The mud plaster has eroded since the walls were
exposed in the 1950s.
In 1999, an earthquake damaged the walls and
a serious bulge developed in one wall (right side
of Fig 33). Since 2014, a conservation program
has been underway to remove and reset the wall
stones in the area of the bulge. The limestone
blocks were rough cut and dry laid c. 900 BC.
The mud plaster filled the joints about 3 to 4 inches
deep and gave the stones stability.
Fig 34 shows the 2016 conservation work underway.
A heavy-duty scaffolding was installed
in 2014 and 2015 that allows the stones to be
stored up high (approximately 250 pound per
square capacity on each of the top two levels).
A lightweight aluminum gantry and hoist were
installed for moving the stones of up to 3,500
28.
29. 30.
31.
32.