Located in the south of Ephesus, The city of Priene offers the marvellous features of a 4th century Greek city. Priene was designed by famous town planner, Hippodamos of Miletus.who designed the city in chess board plan with the strait streets cutting each other at the right angles. Major streets run in the east west direction while the secondary streets run in the north south direction. As a whole city faced to south. This arrangement made the Priene houses getting sun light during the winter mouths and sun went over the roofs of the houses during summer time. Hippodamos plan made the city divided into insulas or islands. Each rectangular area measuring ..........had either four houses or one official building. Some of the buildings such as stadium and theatre did not fit into city plan because of their shape and or their size. Besides its town planing, three monuments attract visitors to Priene:
Priene theatre is one most beautiful examples of Greek type theatres. This horse shoe shaped theatre is built on hillside and had seating capacity of 5000 people. the theatre had renovations during the different periods of the history.
Located nearly 100 meters above the Meander Valley and sea level, the Athena Temple draws attention of the visitors. This Ionic temple which was designed by architect Pytheos, also architect of Mausoleum in Halicarnasus, became one of the most famous monuments of Ionia. After his temple in Priene, Pyteos published a book explaining the principles of the Ionic architecture. The features he used this temple became canonical orders of Ionic architecture.
Buleterion
The third interesting building in Priene is its charming town hall with seating capacity of 640 people. Town hall where the members of the city council used to meet on the special days of the week was covered over with a wooden roof. The Buleterion is entered through two major doors.
