Tralles (modern Aydın) was a city of Lydia on the north side of the Meander valley. The skins and cushions produced there were valuable enough to be included in the price, edict of Diocletian, and its monumental aqueduct of the mid-4th century was the subject of commemorative inscriptions. Tralles was a bishopric throughout the Byzantine period, but its history is obscure. Under Justinian I, John of Ephesus based his missionary activity there and converted thousands of pagans in the neighboring mountains. In its final role as a bulwark against the Turks, Tralles, then desolate, was rebuilt by Andronikos II in 1280 and renamed Andronikopolis and Palaiologopolis. It contained, according to Pachymeres, 36,000 inhabitants. Because of its planners' failure to provide a water supply, the project was aborted and the Turks of Menteshe took Tralles in 1284.