Panorama Photo

I don't believe that there are many places where an ancient theater features the background of a scenic mountain wall like in Termessos. Nested in the elevations close to Antalya, with an endless view over the coastal plain of Pamphylia, Termessos could be dubbed «the unconquerable city»: indeed, neither Alexander the Great nor the Romans succeeded in defeating a place protected by such formidable natural defences.
Today, the site offers an unique example of «archaeological wilderness»: namely, when walking through it you never know if you are leaning the foot on a normal stone or, perhaps, on the carved capital of some column, which elsewhere could be the pride of some museum room (see for example http://bit.ly/2mImK9K).
However, in place of summarizing or pasting here historical information that you can easily find in the rich competing Wikipedia entry, I will briefly recall my own experience.
I arrived in Termessos during my 2008 bicycle tour of the Eastern Mediterranean sea (see for example http://forum.thetop.it/viewtopic.php?t=3144 ; the idea to publish this panorama came after seeing N.9073 from Afrodisias). Maybe it was 5 pm when I showed up at the entrance of the Termessos Milli park, from where a 9 km ascent takes to the parking, at a height of nearly 1000 m. The staff at the ticket office informed me that the site was going to close at 7.30 pm; however, from their complaisant expression I understood that they knew how it was impossible for me to be back in time. Actually, that night I was not the only one to throw «illegally» my sleeping bag on the ground of the archaeological place: there were two other cyclists from Paris sleeping in a tent. We were all alone in the middle of the valley strewn with sarcophagi, most of them reversed and opened by the many earthquakes which shook the region during the millennia. Here, a suitable soundtrack would have been the music set by Bach on the words «und die Erde erbebete, und die Felsen zerrissen, und die Gräber täten sich auf, und stunden auf viel Leiber der Heiligen, die da schliefen».
But these were only thoughts: all what one heard was the song of the cicadas among the resonant mountain walls.
Two rows of 4 pictures taken with Canon G7, with a picture borrowed from another pano to fill the upper left corner. The horizon and the few mountain heights are set according to Udeuschle.

Larger: http://bit.ly/2mImCXO