Sagalassos
In 1706, Paul Lucas, travelling in the region of Southwest Turkey on a mission for Louis XIV, came to the mountaintop ruins of Sagalassos antic city. The first Westerner to see the antic city, Paul Lucas wrote that he seemed to be confronted with remains of several cities inhabited by fairies. Later, during the mid 19th century, William Hamilton described Sagalassos as the best preserved ancient city he had ever seen. Toward the end of the 19th century, Sagalasos antic city and its theater became famous among students of classical antiquity. Yet larger scale excavations along the west coast of Turkey at antic cities like Ephesus and Pergamum, attracted all the attention. Gradually Sagalassos was forgotten until a British-Belgian team led by Stephen Mitchell started surveying the antic city in 1985.
Since 1990, Sagalassos antic city has become a large scale, interdisciplinary excavation of the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, directed by Marc Waelkens. They are now exposing the monumental city center and have almost completed four major restoration projects in Sagalassos. They have also undertaken an intensive urban and geophysical survey, excavations in the domestic and industrial areas, and an intensive survey of the antic citys' vast territory. Whereas the former document a thousand years of occupation, from Alexander the Great to the 7th century, the latter has established the changing settlement patterns, the vegetation history and farming practices, the landscape formation and climatic changes during the last 10,000 years.