Pessinus

Pessinus () was an Ancient city and archbishopric in Asia Minor, a geographical area roughly covering modern Anatolia (Asian Turkey). The site of the city is now the modern Turkish village of Ballıhisar, in a tributary valley of the Sakarya River on the high Anatolian plateau at 950 m above sea level, 13 km from the small town of Sivrihisar. Pessinus remains a Catholic (formerly double) titular see. thumb|right|alt=Map of Pessinus by Charles Texier (1834).|Hypothetic map of the ruins at Pessinus by the French explorer Charles Texier (1834).

== Description == === The temple area === As yet, the temple area, which was excavated between 1967 and 1972, is the only well-studied area of Pessinus. It was studied thoroughly by M. Waelkens (current director of Sagalassos excavations) in the 1980s and between 2006 and 2012 by Verlinde (Ghent University), who built on the findings of the former to analyze and reconstruct the architecture of the Corinthian peripteral temple, of which only the massive foundations remain. Investigations led to several observations, such as the Tiberian date (25-35 AD) of the cult building and its identification as a temple of the imperial cult (Sebasteion). As such, it was finally established that the excavated temple could not be identified as the Temple of Cybele, as explorer Charles Texier had done when he 'discovered' the foundations of the temple in 1834. Verlinde discovered that the building was designed on the basis of a grid, and that the governing module, determining the intervals and height of the columns, was equal to the lower diameter of the columns (0.76 m). Each intercolumnar space was equal to two modules (1.52 m), which designates the temple as a 'systyle.'