ALINDA

This site covers the side of a mountain. To visit, you go by road to the top, where you are dropped off and then you walk to the bottom where you gratefully flop down in the café in Karpuzlu town square. We were the only visitors that day. The caretaker of the site must have been so bored that he walked down with us. The site has been very little excavated, but there is still plenty to see.

Little is known about Alinda before the 5th century B.C. but it may have been an important city since the second millennium B.C. and has been associated with Ialanti that appears in Hittite sources. It was one of the most strongly fortified cities of the Carian region.

In 340 B.C. Queen Ada, the sister of Mausolus of Halicarnassus (today's Bodrum) was banished by her younger brother Pixodarus to the city of Alinda. She awaited an opportunity to regain her lost kingdom. until, in 334 BC, Alexander the Great marched into Caria in order to clear the region from Persian threat. Ada visited the young conqueror with a proposal according to which she would surrender the city of Alinda to him and would help him in his campaign to conquer Caria. In return, Alexander was to restore the throne to Ada. But Alexander, pleased with her attitudes and perhaps enthralled just a bit by her feminine charms, refused to take Alinda from Queen Ada and instead, made her the ruler of all of Caria.

For a time Alinda was controlled by the Seleucids, Antiochus III sending a garrison here.

Alinda issued its silver coinage from the beginning of 2nd Century B.C. until the end of 3rd Century A.D.

Roman Aqueduct near the top of the site.

2 storey Square Tower. A bit of an enigma since it doesn't seem to have been a defensive tower. Maybe used to haul goods up the hill?

The Theatre from above. Built in the 2nd Century B.C. and modified in the time of Augustus.

Theatre from below.

Agora /Market building from above.

The Market building, which was 3 storeys high and 100m long, contained the Agora which was 30m square. The remains of the columns of the colonnade can be seen sitting on top of masonry bases. In other words, the paved area would have been level with where the picture was taken.

The outside of the market building - the other side of the picture above.

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Alinda
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