Nysa Ancient City

Ancient City

A city built on both sides of a gorge and joined by a vast ancient tunnel — where the geographer Strabo studied, and home to one of Anatolia’s best-preserved libraries.

Set on a slope overlooking the Meander plain in the Sultanhisar district of Aydın, Nysa was known in the ancient world as a “double city,” because a deep gorge split it in two. Roman engineers overcame this with a magnificent solution: the vaulted tunnel-bridge about a hundred metres long that covers the gorge, with the stream running beneath it, is one of the longest examples from the ancient world and still stands today. The city’s agora rose above this structure.

Nysa was a city of learning: the famous geographer Strabo was educated here in his youth and described the city in detail in his works. Its most striking structure is the library, surviving with its two-storey façade and book niches; it is considered the best-preserved ancient library in Anatolia after the Celsus Library at Ephesus. The theatre on the slope is impressive for its relief friezes narrating the mythology of Dionysos; the bouleuterion, gymnasion and stadium remains can also be explored. Among olive groves and fig orchards, it is a quiet site away from the crowds.