CULTURAL HERITAGE OF TURKEY

 UNESCO "Building Peace in the Minds of Men and Women”

Unesco World Heritage List

Properties Submitted On The Tentative List

Aizanoi, Ani, Beçin, Birgi, Hacı Bektaş Veli, Gordion, Mamure Castle, Hecatomnus, Odunpazarı, Yesemek, Zeugma

INTERVIEW AMBASSADOR GÜRCAN TÜRKOĞLU We need to concentrate on the preservation of the existing heritage in the best possible and assiduous manner rather than accounting for the past. There is actually quite an appropriate environment for this in Turkey: from the highest level of the State apparatus to local authorities, from civil society to media, universities and the private sector there is, at every level, an inc

EPHESOS 

Located on the western Aegean coast of Turkey, the archaeological site of Ephesos was inhabited from the Neolithic Age at Çukuriçi Höyük up to the medieval period at Ayasuluk, but changed its location several times in the course of its long history in accordance with habits and requirements. Therefore the large site area, measuring approximately 1600 ha, today displays remains of all important stages of human history such as the Prehistoric, Archaic, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Selçuk, Aydınoğulları, Ottoman and modern periods.

SAGALASSOS

At the time of Alexander the Great, the historical sources later used by Arrian described Sagalassos as “not a small city inhabited by Pisidians, who were thought to be the most warlike of these warlike people”. Most likely, they had earned this reputation as mercenaries for the Persian kings and some of their adversaries. This reputation also explains the extreme and continuous popularity until Roman Imperial times of weaponry friezes on public and sepulchral monuments.

PERGAMON

“…from every side glorious to behold, a solitary summit of the province” – this is the description the orator Aelius Aristeides (117-181 AD), who paid repeated visits to Pergamon as a patient of the Asclepieion, gives of the city’s architectural ensemble. Aristeides’ judgement – couched in the exalted style of the professional rhetor – conveys a sense of the visual impact made on contemporary observers by Pergamon’s grand architecture.