Aphrodisias

Aphrodisias was a city built of marble by people who knew how to carve it. Quarries of white and blue-grey stone on the slopes just above the town fed a school of sculptors whose work became famous across the Roman world, and the ruins in a fertile valley of inland Caria are still crowded with columns, reliefs, portraits and inscriptions. Its stadium, about 270 metres long with some thirty rows of seats on each side for as many as 30,000 spectators, is among the best-preserved buildings of its kind anywhere in the Mediterranean. The site was inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List in 2017, together with the ancient marble quarries.

The city took its name from Aphrodite, whose distinctive local cult image stood in its temple: a stiff, columnar figure wrapped in a tunic carved with bands of celestial and marine imagery, closer to the Artemis of Ephesus than to the Aphrodite of classical art. Its golden age came with Rome. Excavations have shown that much of the monumental centre was paid for by Gaius Julius Zoilos, a native of the city freed by Octavian, who steered Aphrodisias to Octavian's side in his struggle with Mark Antony and secured lasting privileges for it. The Sebasteion, a temple complex dedicated to Aphrodite, the deified emperors and the people, was lined with marble reliefs, among them a famous panel of the emperor Claudius subduing a figure of Britannia. Around AD 200 a richly carved four-way gateway, the tetrapylon, was raised before the sanctuary of Aphrodite, and the bouleuterion, a roofed council chamber and concert hall for about 1,750 people, was rebuilt with a sculpted stage front.

Aphrodisias was also a centre of philosophy, home to Alexander of Aphrodisias, the great commentator on Aristotle, and to the novelist Chariton. It remained a stronghold of the old religion until late in the 5th century; afterwards the temple of Aphrodite was converted into a church and the city renamed Stauropolis, the "City of the Cross". Earthquakes in the 4th and 7th centuries left it in decline, and its later name, Caria, survives in the Turkish village name Geyre. More than 2,000 inscriptions have been recorded on the site. Systematic excavation began under Kenan Erim of New York University in 1962, after the old village of Geyre, which stood over the ruins, had been moved a short distance away; the finds are displayed in the Aphrodisias Museum next to the site.

Getting there

Aphrodisias lies beside the village of Geyre in the Karacasu district of Aydın Province, about 100 km inland from the Aegean coast and some 230 km south-east of İzmir. The town of Sarayköy, in Denizli Province, is about 30 km away. The nearest airport is Denizli Çardak (DNZ), about 87 km away. The site is reached by road.