Sights in Behramkale & Assos
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Temple of Athena
Right on top of the hill in Behramkale village is this 6th-century BC Ionic temple. The short tapered columns with plain capitals are hardly elegant, and the concrete reconstruction hurts more than helps, but the site and the view out to Lesvos are spectacular and well worth the admission fee.
Villagers set up stalls all the way up the hill to the temple, touting local products from bags of dried herbs or mushrooms to linen.
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Other Ruins
Scramble down the hill from the temple, or walk along the road to Assos, to find the necropolis. Assos' sarcophagi (from the Greek, 'flesh-eaters') were famous. According to Pliny the Elder, the stone was caustic and 'ate' the flesh off the deceased in 40 days. Other ruins include the remains of a late-2nd-century-BC theatre and basilica.
Ringing the hill are stretches of the city walls of medieval Assos, which are among the most impressive medieval fortifications in Turkey.
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Hüdavendigar Camii
Beside the entrance to the temple, this 14th-century mosque is a simply constructed Ottoman mosque – a dome on squinches set on top of a square room – built before the Turks had conquered Constantinople and assimilated the lessons of Sancta Sophia. It's one of just two remaining Ottoman mosques of its kind in Turkey the (other is in Bursa).
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