Pessinus (Greek: Πεσσινούς or Πισσινούς) 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 ca.

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.

[5] The architecture of the limestone complex (covered with stucco lustro)[6] emanates the style of Hellenistic palaestrae such as the Gymnasion of Eudemos at Miletus (late 3rd century BC).

Being quite similar to the latter complex, the Pessinuntian square was reconstructed by Verlinde as a 'quadriporticus' with a Rhodian peristyle, that is with a high (Ionic) colonnade to the north, and three lower wings with Doric columns.

Carbon dating and ceramological analysis indicates that the palaestra (sports gym) was destroyed by a fire during the late Hellenistic age, suggesting that the colonnaded square as a functional entity was short-lived.

For example, the geographer Strabo (12.5.3) writes that the priests were potentates in "ancient times", but it is unclear whether Pessinus was already a temple state ruled by dynastai ("lords") in the Phrygian period.

By the 3rd century BC at the latest, Pessinus had become a temple state ruled by a clerical oligarchy consisting of Galloi, eunuch priests of the Mother Goddess.

In 205/204 BC, alarmed by a number of meteor showers during the ongoing Second Punic War, the Romans, after consulting the Sibylline Books, decided to introduce the cult of the Great Mother of Ida (Magna Mater Idaea, also known as Cybele) to the city.

They sought the aid of their ally Attalus I (241-197 BC), and following his instructions, they went to Pessinus and removed the goddess' most important image, a large black stone that was said to have fallen from the sky, to Rome (Livy 10.4-11.18).

Pessinus became the administrative capital of the Galatian tribe of the Tolistobogii and soon developed into a genuinely Graeco-Roman polis with a large number of monumental buildings, such as a colonnaded street and a Temple of the Imperial Cult.

A stamped handle of a wine amphora from Thasos, probably dating from the first quarter of the 3rd century BC, is proof of this trade and is at the same time the earliest written document discovered at Pessinus.

The boundaries of Pessinus must have been fixed, as were those of the newly founded colony of Germakoloneia (near Babadat), which received part of the area inhabited by the Tolistobogioi.

It was meant to retain and carry away the waters of the Gallos, the seasonal river which traverses Pessinus and which was the main north-south artery (cardo maximus) of the city.

Other monumental buildings, erected under the reign of Tiberius, included the marble peripteros temple of the provincial Imperial cult, a Sebasteion, on a hill at the north-western end of the canal, a stairway combined with a theatre in front (with an orchestra where religious and other performances such as gladiator fights took place).

[9] In the past,[10] this structure was wrongly situated in the Tiberian era, but it was shown that it was a monument of the Hellenistic age (late 2nd-early 1st century BC), and contemporary with the citadel that preceded the temple complex.

The area remained under Byzantine control until lost to the Seljuk Turks in the latter 11th century, after which Pessinus became an inconspicuous mountain village at 900m height, gradually getting depopulated since it was fully protected.