Author Description

Now he follows it with a guide to the fascinating sites of the Mediterranean coast and central Anatolia, many of which are still unexplored, and to whose civilisations he is an admirable guide. John Freely's knowledge of Turkey is encyclopaedic, and he is renowned for his interpretation of Turkish life, culture and history through the great monuments of the country's Byzantine, Ottoman and earlier past. Along the Aegean and Mediterranean coasts of Asia Minor there are archaeological sites of ancient Graeco-Roman cities dating back to the beginning of the first millennium BC, some of them originating in pre-Hellenic times. And in the interior of Anatolia are the ruins and monuments of still earlier city-states, kingdoms, empires and prehistoric cultures that stretch back some ten millennia to the late Stone Age. This guide comprises a continuous series of itineraries that travel along the Aegean and Mediterranean coasts, with excursions into the interior; there are maps of itineraries and plans of important monuments and archaeological even the best road map of Turkey shows only some of the archaeological sites covered in this guide.