Our compilation for Aydın, not an official route, and the province gives it real spread — from the inland hills in the east to the Aegean shore in the west.
Aphrodisias is the anchor. The city of the goddess of love was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2017, and it is known both for how well its monumental buildings survive and for the school of sculptors who worked there on marble quarried close by. The museum beside it shows only what came out of that ground, which makes site and museum one visit, not two.
The Menderes valley carries the middle of the list. Nysa stands above Sultanhisar, founded as two settlements joined by a bridge; Magnesia lies at Germencik; the Yörük Ali Efe Museum at Yenipazar keeps the memory of the man who led the armed resistance in Aydın, in the house that was his; and Alabanda, in Çine, spreads over two hill slopes above the Çine stream.
The west end is coast and mountain. Miletos, the temple of Apollo at Didyma — the ministry counts it among the best preserved great Ionic temples — the Beşparmak range, called Latmos in antiquity, whose old paths climb from Lake Bafa and form part of the Carian Trail, the national park joining the Dilek peninsula to the delta of the Büyük Menderes, and the castle on the pigeon island at Kuşadası. Oleatrium, the olive and olive-oil museum, belongs with this end of the province; our inventory holds no position for it yet, so read the grouping as a shape rather than a schedule. What each place is, and who says so, is on its own page.
