Anazarbus

Listen for a moment. Out here on the plain, the loudest sound is often the wind moving through dry grass. Somewhere a tractor hums. A dog barks from a farmyard. Ahead of you a long ridge of grey limestone rises out of the flat land like the back of a sleeping animal. Along its crest run broken walls and towers. Below it, scattered through fields and village gardens, lie the stones of a city that once argued with Tarsus over which of them ruled this corner of the ancient world.

This is Anazarbus. Today it sits beside the small village of Dilekkaya, on the farmland outside Kozan, in the Turkish province of Adana. In antiquity this land was called Cilicia. That was a region on the southern coast of what is now Turkey, squeezed between the Taurus Mountains and the Mediterranean Sea. Its plains were fertile and its roads were busy. Armies, merchants and pilgrims all passed this way. And a city that could watch those roads from a rocky height had real value.

That ridge is the reason the city exists. A sheer outcrop on an open plain is a natural fortress. People settled at its foot long before the Romans arrived. But the city reached its full size under Rome. In the time of the emperor Augustus it took the name Caesarea, in honour of the imperial family. Historians often call it Caesarea by Anazarbus, to separate it from the many other cities that carried the same imperial name.

In the Roman centuries the city grew rich and proud. It became a metropolis — a formal title, not just a description. It meant a leading city of the province. Coins struck here carried that status with obvious pride. Tarsus, the older and more famous city to the west, held a similar rank. The two cities competed for honours, for titles, and for the favour of emperors. It was a rivalry of pride as much as power.

Now turn your eyes to the great gate, if you can see it from where you stand. This is the monumental arch, with three openings, that once marked the entrance to the city. It is built from carefully cut stone, with columns and niches on its face. Many scholars date it to the late second or early third century. Even in ruin, it still frames the road. Walk through it, and you follow the same line that Roman travellers walked.

Beyond the arch, try to picture a long, straight street lined with columns on both sides. Colonnaded avenues like this were the main streets of grand Roman cities in the eastern provinces. Shops stood under the covered walkways. People sheltered there from the hard summer sun. Here and there you can still find column bases and fallen shafts in the fields. Farmers have worked around them for generations. In some places the old line of the road is still clear.

Here is something many visitors miss. Two famous writers of the ancient world are linked to this city. The first is Dioscorides, a physician of the first century. He wrote a long book about medicinal plants. For about 1,500 years, doctors across Europe and the Middle East copied it and studied it. The second is the poet Oppian, who wrote a long poem about fishing. Ancient sources connect him to Anazarbus. So this quiet field produced one of the most-read medical books in history.

Cities on this plain lived with a constant danger — earthquakes. In the sixth century, powerful earthquakes struck Anazarbus and caused heavy damage. The Byzantine emperors of that time paid to rebuild it. As a sign of thanks, the city took a new imperial name for a while. You can still see the results of that long story of damage and repair. Look closely at the walls, and you will often find old Roman blocks reused in later construction.

The city did not end with Rome or Byzantium. Over the following centuries, control passed back and forth. Arab armies, Byzantine generals and other powers fought over the plain. Arab writers knew the city as Ayn Zarba. Later, in the twelfth century, Anazarbus served for a time as an important centre of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia. That was a Christian kingdom that grew up on this coast during the age of the Crusades.

Much of what you see on the summit comes from those medieval centuries. The fortress follows the narrow crest of the ridge. Towers and walls step along the rock wherever the ground allows. Inside are the remains of a church and other buildings. The climb is steep and the footing is uneven, but the reward is the view. From the top, the whole plain spreads out below you, with mountains rising in the distance.

Now look at the face of the ridge itself. The rock is not blank. Ancient people cut tombs directly into the limestone. You can spot square openings and carved chambers in the cliff. At the base of the slope there are also traces of a theatre and a stadium. Builders shaped some of these seats into the hillside. Nothing was wasted here. The same rock that guarded the city also gave its people seats, stone and graves.

Water was the other great project. A city of this size needed far more water than wells could give. The Romans built aqueducts to carry water across the plain from distant sources. Sections of those arches still stand in the fields. They look almost casual among the crops, but they were serious engineering. Mosaics found at Anazarbus also show how wealthy some households were. Several now sit in a small open-air display or in regional museums.

Before you leave, stand still once more and look along the ridge. The village roofs, the orchards, the old stones in the field walls — they all share the same ground. People still live and farm among the ruins, as they have for centuries. Watch the light move across the grey limestone as the afternoon passes. And as you walk back toward the road, notice how many old carved blocks you can find in places you did not expect.