Perge was one of the leading cities of Pamphylia, the fertile coastal plain between the Taurus Mountains and the Mediterranean, and what survives today is above all a plan. The visitor enters past the Hellenistic gate with its two massive round towers, still the most photogenic structure on the site, then follows the colonnaded main street that runs the length of the city with a water channel cut down its centre, a cooling device and a piece of civic display in equal measure. On either side lie the agora, the baths with their surviving floors and pools, and a monumental nymphaeum; outside the walls stand a theatre and a stadium whose tiers of vaulted chambers remain remarkably intact. Perge belongs to intellectual as well as urban history, as the birthplace of the mathematician Apollonius, and to Christian history, as one of the towns where Paul preached on his first journey through Asia Minor. Filmed in 4K with aerial coverage of the street grid, the programme reads the ruins as a working city rather than a field of stones.
