Guide
Blaundos stands within the village of Sülümenli in the Ulubey district, 40 kilometres from Uşak, and is registered as a first-degree conservation site. It is said to have been founded by settlers from Macedonia after Alexander's campaigns in Anatolia, and that its people called themselves the Macedonians of Blaundos.
That is not only a story. In the 1840s Hamilton found an inscription known to have come from the city carrying the phrase Blaundeon Makedonon, which settled both the name and the claim.
After Alexander's death the city fell to Antigonos, one of the generals who divided the empire between them. It passed from the kingdom of Pergamon to Rome in 189 BC and its importance grew under Roman rule. In the church organisation it came under the bishopric of Sebaste, in what is now the Sivaslı district of the same province.
The site sits on a peninsula of land closed on three sides by deep, steep valleys, which means the only way in was through the gate on the north. What survives includes the arch of that Hellenistic gate, parts of the walls, the mint rooms and administrative buildings, an Ionic temple in the middle of the city dedicated to the emperor Claudius, a stadium with seating on one side only, the theatre on the southern slope, and rock-cut tombs.
