Overview
An ancient city we found surprisingly crowded. There were loads of foreign tourists, presumably drawn by the famous Pergamon Museum in Berlin.
Getting There
It was packed on the weekend. If driving, the road up to the hilltop is quite narrow with some especially tricky spots, and the parking is pure chaos. A thoroughly Turkish-style road and parking situation. We didn't use the cable car, but during peak crowds it might be the smarter option for a comfortable ascent.
What to See
The site itself is in pretty poor shape. Walking paths and traverse boards have deteriorated, all the digital information screens that were once installed have been removed, and stones are piled up haphazardly everywhere. For a place receiving this many tourists, the level of neglect and the complete absence of active work is both shocking and sad.
Some information signs still have descriptions written only in German. Whoever originally set them up just left them that way, and nobody has added a single update since. Right in the middle of the ancient site, there's also a collapsed modern building of unknown purpose. Only in Turkey would someone build something like that in the middle of a heritage site.
They even put mirrors at the trickiest road bends so you could see oncoming traffic. Even those mirrors are gone now. I genuinely don't know what else there is to say.