Metropolis of Pergamon
The Metropolis of Pergamon () was an ecclesiastical territory (diocese) of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in western Asia Minor, modern Turkey. Christianity in the city of Pergamon (modern Bergama), was introduced already from 1st century AD, while the local Christian community comprised one of the seven Churches of Asia mentioned at the Book of Revelation, written by John of Patmos. The bishopric of Pergamon was twice promoted to a metropolis: during the 13th–14th centuries, as well as for a short period in 1922. Today the "Metropolis of Pergamon and Adramyttium" is the see of a titular metropolitan.
Pergamon Altar
Between 1431 and 1444 the Italian humanist Cyriacus of Ancona visited Pergamon and described it in his commentarii (diary). In 1625 William Petty, chaplain to Thomas Howard, 21st Earl of Arundel, a collector and art patron, traveled through Turkey, visited Pergamon, and brought back to England two relief panels from the altar. These pieces were forgotten after the Earl's collection was dispersed and were only rediscovered in the 1960s. For this reason these two panels are lacking in the Berlin reconstruction. Other travelers known to have visited Pergamon during the late 18th and early 19th centuries were, for example, the French diplomat and classical scholar Comte de Choiseul-Gouffier, the English architect Charles Robert Cockerell and two Germans, the archaeologist Otto Magnus von Stackelberg and the classical scholar Otto Friedrich von Richter. Choiseul-Gouffier was the first to propose excavations in Pergamon; the other three travelers made drawings of the city's acropolis.