Bağbaşı Plateau

Amusement park and fairground.

What it says on the label. At least now you know that bez bebek is Turkish for a rag doll.

Atatürk stayed overnight here on 4 Feb 1931, when it was the local party offices. In the 1950s it was a TB dispensary. It became an ethnography and city history museum in 1984 but the 19th century structure needed an extended closure for repairs, re-opening in 1999.

This city grew up from around 260 BC; it was on a spur of a hill along trade routes and became wealthy. About 213 BC, some 2000 Jewish families were deported here from Phrygia, and that community was proselitized by early Christian evangelists: Revelation 3:14–22 scorns them as lukewarm and insipid. The city was wrecked by an earthquake of 60 AD but rebuilt. Its main avenue is called Syria Street. The temple has a glass floor so you can look down into the basement and see offerings uncovered during excavations. There's also a west amphitheatre, a scrappy north amphitheatre, and church foundations, plus an outlying stadium and baths. Any bus or dolmuş towards Pamukkale will drop off by the approach road then you walk 1.5 km west.