Editing Pergamon (section)

===Streets and bridges===
The course of the main street, which winds up the hill to the Acropolis with a series of hairpin turns, is typical of the street system of Pergamon. On this street were shops and warehouses.<ref>Wolfgang Radt, ''Pergamon: Geschichte und Bauten einer antiken Metropole''. Darmstadt (1999) p. 84.</ref> The surface of the street consisted of andesite blocks up to 5 metres wide, 1 metre long and 30&nbsp;cm deep. The street included a drainage system, which carried the water down the slope. Since it was the most important street of the city, the quality of the material used in its construction was very high.<ref>Wolfgang Radt, ''Pergamon: Geschichte und Bauten einer antiken Metropole''. Darmstadt 1999, pp. 84–85.</ref>

[[File:Pergamon bridge.jpg|thumb|right|Roman bridge of Pergamon]]

Philetairos' design of the city was shaped above all by circumstantial considerations. Only under Eumenes II was this approach discarded and the city plan begins to show signs of an overall plan.<ref>Ulrike Wulf, "Der Stadtplan von Pergamon. Zu Entwicklung und Stadtstruktur von der Neugründung unter Philetairos bis in spätantike Zeit," ''Istanbuler Mitteilungen''. Vol. 44 (1994) p. 142–3.</ref> Contrary to earlier attempts at an orthogonal street system, a fan-shaped design seems to have been adopted for the area around the gymnasium, with streets up to four metres wide, apparently intended to enable effective traffic flow. In contrast to it, Philetairos' system of alleys was created unsystematically, although the topic is still under investigation.<ref>Ulrike Wulf, "Der Stadtplan von Pergamon. Zu Entwicklung und Stadtstruktur von der Neugründung unter Philetairos bis in spätantike Zeit," ''Istanbuler Mitteilungen''. Vol. 44 (1994) pp. 136–137.</ref><ref>Wolfgang Radt, "Pergamon 1998," ''[[Archäologischer Anzeiger]]'' (1999) pp. 309–312.</ref> Where the lay of the land prevented the laying of a street, small alleys were installed as connections instead. In general, therefore, there are large, broad streets (''plateiai'') and small, narrow connecting streets (''stenopoi'').

The nearly 200 metre wide [[Pergamon Bridge]] under the forecourt of the [[Red Basilica]] in the centre of Bergama is the largest bridge substruction from antiquity.<ref>Klaus Grewe, Ünal Özis, et al. "Die antiken Flußüberbauungen von Pergamon und Nysa (Türkei)," ''[[Antike Welt]]''. Vol. 25, No. 4 (1994) pp. 348–352 (pp. 350 & 352).</ref>