The remains of the ancient church of Philadelphia are hidden along a side street in the modern Turkish town of Alasehir. It's a quiet, well-manicured garden sanctuary that sits by the only two surviving arches from a sixth century Byzantine basilica. Attalus founded Pergamum in honor of his brother Philadelphia whose name means 'he who loves his brother.' It was a prosperous city plagued by regular earthquakes including one in AD 17 that destroyed twelve Asian ci...

The Lycus Valley is a fertile stretch of land in western Turkey where three communities of first century Christians once lived - in Colossae, Laodicea and Hierapolis (Colossians 2:1; 4:13). Of these Colossae was the oldest. It was a city when the Persian king Xerxes and his army passed through this region in 480 B.C. Laodicea was founded by the Seleucid King Antiochus II (261-246 B.C.) while Hierapolis received the constitution of a city from Eumenes II, king of...

Pergamum is an impressive place. This city's loyalty to Caesar was rewarded in the second century AD with an imperial cult temple being erected on a high peak overlooking the city in honor of Emperor Trajan. An altar to Zeus stood on a lower slope of the summit, the smoke from its sacrifices rising day and night over the capital city. To the side of the royal citadel lay the marble stoned seating of an impressive theatre dedicated to the party god, Dionysis. The...

The first view of the Soganli valley in central Cappadocia takes your breath away. We descended from an agricultural plateau dried out by the recent summer into a ravine largely hidden from the world above and far removed from the regional capital, Kayseri (Caesar's city). To enter Soganli is to step back in time. Rugged rock faces tower over green leafed poplar trees that fill the valley floor. A gentle stream flows quietly alongside the solitary road that winds...

This morning we rose early to drive to the launch site for ballooning over spectacular Cappadocia in central Turkey. The pre-dawn sky shone with stars and the air was pleasantly warm and reassuringly still. Cappadocia is an ancient landscape covered in cave dwellings crafted out of volcanic ash debris and shaped by floods that have washed this otherworldly scene for millennia. Two appealing aspects of ballooning are the silence and the scenery. The sky was filled...