Ancient hospital ruins in Bergema

Beautiful road trip today down the west coast of türkiye where we can see the greek islands off the coast. the landscape is like a patchwork of green agriculture (figs, fruit, vegetables) but mostly olive trees (bear olives for olive oil 7 years after planting and live for 2 thousand years) - they are everywhere and the olive oil is delicious!
We drove to the ruins of the Asklepion medical centre or healing place in Bergema, it is one of the most important centres of healing of the Roman world. To keep its reputation of successful healing high it did not accept people who were near death and only admitted people who were rich. It was amazing to see the treatment rooms, mental health ward which used music, dance, dream interpretation, herbs and mythology to treat ‘ill health of the head’. We learned about the first recorded use of placebo in treatment. The healing place had a library, isolation rooms, ampitheatre, cubicles, prayer rooms, healing water, portico and ruins still show the layout. We could have stayed there all day, built in 302 bc and which honoured Asclepius the first doctor-demigod in Greek mythology.
We ate the most delicious lunch at a local cafe which was DELICIOUS and then travelled onto Izmir, a busy fishing city on the coast side which gave us a magnificent sunset. Ended our day with another walk water side, thankful for our experiences in beautiful TürkiyeRead more