Acropolis

The road up to the acropolis winds 5km from the Red Basilica to a car park (TL3) at the top, with some souvenir and refreshment stands nearby. If you're planning to walk to the site, take plenty of water as you won't be able to stock up on the way. A short cut shaves a couple of kilometres from the walk; opposite the Red Basilica, take Mahmut Şevket Paşa Sokak, the narrow lane between Aklar Gıda groceries and a carpet shop, which leads to the Lower Agora. Take care as the path is steep and not always clearly marked.

A line of rather faded (and in some places completely obliterated) blue dots marks a suggested route around the main structures, which include the library as well as the marble-columned Temple of Trajan, built during the reigns of the emperors Trajan and Hadrian and used to worship them as well as Zeus. It's the only Roman structure surviving on the acropolis, and its foundations were used as cisterns during the Middle Ages.

Immediately downhill from the temple, descend through the tunnel to the vertigo-inducing, 10,000-seat theatre. Impressive and unusual, its builders decided to take advantage of the spectacular view, and conserve precious space on top of the hill, by building the theatre into the hillside. In general, Hellenistic theatres are wider and rounder than this, but at Pergamum the hillside location made rounding impossible and so it was increased in height instead.

Below the stage is the ruined Temple of Dionysus, while above the theatre is the Altar of Zeus, which was originally covered with magnificent friezes depicting the battle between the Olympian gods and their subterranean foes. However 19th-century German excavators were allowed to remove most of this famous building to Berlin, leaving only the base behind.

Piles of rubble on top of the acropolis are marked as palaces, including that of Eumenes II, and you can also see fragments of the once-magnificent defensive walls.

To escape the crowds and get a good view of the theatre and Temple of Trajan, walk downhill behind the Altar of Zeus, or turn left at the bottom of the theatre steps, and follow the sign to the antik yol (antique street). Ruins, including gymnasiums, sprawl down the hill to a building on the site of the Middle City protecting part of a peristyle court and some fantastic mosaic floors; look for the grotesque faces at the far end. With sights beyond including the Lower Agora, from here you could ruin hop back to the foot of the hill, taking the short cut suggested in the opposite direction.