SARDIS
Former capital of the kingdom of Lydia, about 80 km east of Smyrna, at the foot of Mount Tmolos.
In the year 546 B.C. Cyrus defeated Croesus, seizing his capital, which became a center of Persian administration. After the passage of the Greeks and Romans, and under the rule of the latter, Sardis was destroyed by an earthquake in the year 17 AD.
Emperor Tiberius exempted it from taxes to facilitate its reconstruction; It had a Jewish neighborhood (Ant. 14:10, 24), and soon it had a Christian community (Rev. 1:11; 3:1, 4).
Nowadays it is a town; There are the ruins of a large temple dedicated to Artemis, from the 4th century BC, and vestiges of a temple of Zeus, and the walls of a Christian church from the 4th century.
His current name is Sart.