Nysa, Anatolia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nysa was an ancient Greek city of Anatolia, whose remnants are now in the Sultanhisar district of Aydın Province of Turkey 50 km East of the Ionian city of Ephesus. The geographer and historian Strabo, born in Amasiya started his life of study in Nysa, which was an important center of learning in the first century B.C.. The city had been dedicated to Dionysus when it was founded by Antiochus I Soter in the third century B.C. and it was still famous as a city of scholars in the second century A.D.. For about a thousand years after that the city had its ups and downs. It suffered from the depredations of the Christians, the Muslims and the Turks as they came in and out of the place, and it was finally abandoned after being sacked by Tamerlane in 1402.

There are important ruins on the site from the Hellenistic period, the Roman period and the Byzantine era. Much of the open air Greek theatre and its walled entrances are still intact. There is only a single massive wall left of the famous library. There are remnants of a Roman Odeon, a gymnasion, a Roman bath and a bouleuterion.