Turkey’s Aegean Coast is a land of contrasts, where bikini-clad bathers and beach resorts vie with traditional bazaars and cafés selling Turkish coffee poured from brass-spouted urns. The past is always present in the artifacts of a Hellenic culture which once flowered all over the Anatolia. Dikili is your gateway to ancient Pergamon (now Bergama), one of the greatest cities in Hellenic history. Founded by a general of Alexander the Great, Pergamon was renewed for its library, which was bigger than Alexandria’s, and its medical center, which supposedly never lost a patient. See the huge 10,000-seat amphitheater and the remains of the Asclepian where the great Greek physician Galen healed his patients.