Sardis
About 80 kilometers to Izmir, Sardis (Sart in Turkish), near the Salihli village, was built around 1200 BC and was later settled by the Lydians as the capital of the Lydian Empire. Sardis antic city grew to be incredibly wealthy thanks to the gold that was washed down from the nearby mountains and caught in sheepskins by the locals. So it's not actually a surprise for the Lydians to be the ones that invented coinage. The first coins were issued under Sardis's most celebrated king, Croesus, under whose rule (563-546 BC) the kingdom's prosperity grew, attracting the attention of the Persians under Cyrus the Great. Croesus went to war against the Persians and after a two week siege Sardis fell and Croesus was supposedly burned alive by the victors.
As a Persian City, Sardis was sacked during the Ioanian revolt of 499 BC. Sardis made a comeback under Alexander the Great and the Macedonians, but was destroyed by an earthquake in 17 AD. The Romans rebuilt Sardis, having taken it at the same time as Manisa and the town was the site of one of the Seven Churches of Asia addressed by Saint John in the Book of Revelation. Sardis was abandoned after the invasion of the Saruhan Turks and never really recovered. Sardis only came to light again early this century, when American archeologists began excavating mostly Roman and Byzantine remains of Sardis.
There are two main clusters of ruins in Sardis. The first, primarily made up of the gymnasium and synagogue lies just north of the road on the eastern edge of the village and includes the Marble Way, a Byzantine shopping street complete with Latrines whose holes and drainage channels are still visible. The various shops of Sardis are labelled and include a restaurant, an office and a hardware shop.
A left turn leads into the restored synagogue, whose walls are covered with impressive mosaics. Almost right next to the synagogue, the highlight of the 3rd century AD gymnasium is the Marble Court with an intact facade dedicated to the Roman Emperor Septimus Severus. Behind the court are the remains of a swimming pool and rest area.
From Salihli village teahouses, a paved track leads 1,2 km. south from the main road to the other main site of Sardis, the Temple of Artemis. (Artemis, known as Diana by the Romans, was the daughter of Zeus and sister of Apollo. She was the goddess of hunting, the moon and fertility) The Artemis Temple of Sardis, once among the four largest in Asia Minor, was built by Croesus, destroyed by the Greek raiders during the Ionian revolt and later rebuilt by Alexander the Great. Enough of the foundations are visible to make clear how large the temple used to be.