File:The Amphitheatre, Pergamon.jpg

English: The Amphitheatre at Pergamon, Izmir, Turkey 26 October 2009. This amphitheatre was the the steepest ever built. Greek amphitheatres were built into hillsides in contrast to free-standing Roman ones. The Temple of Zeus stood on the area of flat ground to the right of the Amphiteatre but little remains of that. First established by Greeks in the 8th Century BC, Pergamon later became part of the Persian Empire until taken by Alexander the Great in the 4th Century B.C. It grew to become an important city in the region of Mysia. Under the Attalid dynasty (281-133BC), it was at the height of its power and one of the major centres of the Greek world, being made the capital of the Kingdom of Pergamon. In 129 BC it fell to Rome but it remained an important city in the Roman Empire and was briefly the capital of the Roman province of Asia Minor until Ephesus replaced it. Trajan and Hadrian completely rebuilt the city in the early 3rd Century BC but in 262 AD it was badly damaged in an earthquake only to be sacked by the Goths in the following year. The city suffered serious economic decline but was still of some importance in the Byzantine period. Then in 663/4 and 716 it was sacked by Arabs and then by the Turks several times in the 12th and 13th Centuries. Subsequently, the populace moved from the city, which was largely in ruins, to a new settlement of Bergama nearby.