Growing up in Bergama, a town of 200,000 people in the western hills of Turkey, history is all around you. Some 2,400 years ago, when the place was known as Pergamum, Alexander the Great swept the city up on his conquests, gifting to Cleopatra its legendary library. Later, when the Romans took over, its enlightened past led Pliny the Elder to call it “the most famous and magnificent city of the Asia Minor.” Bergama’s bounty of historical sites has been drawing in throngs of tourists for years.