Our first port of call was the museum in Afrodisias and following this we did a full tour of the ancient city of Afrodisias.
APHRODISIAS was a prosperous ancient city, famous in Roman times for its Sanctuary of Aphrodite. Its monuments are unusually well-preserved, making it one of the most important archaeological sites in Turkey.
A prehistoric settlement mound, later the site of the theatre, marks the earliest habitation of the site, in about 5000 B.C. By the 6th century B.C., the Sanctuary of Aphrodite was well-established, but Aphrodisias remained a village until the 2nd or 1st century B.C., when a new town was laid out on a grid plan.
The city occupied an area of just under one square kilometer, and had a maximum population of 15,000.
The Roman emperor Augustus took Aphrodisias under his personal protection in the late 1st century B.C., and the next 250 years saw the construction of most of the monumental buildings on the site. The city plan was centered around the Temple of Aphrodite and the Theater, with two large colonnaded squares between them. The Stadium, on the northern edge of the city, is the best preserved of all ancient stadia. Aphrodisias became the capital of the Roman province of Caria in the late 3rd century A.D., and was fortified for the first time in the mid-4th century. The city remained prosperous through the 6th century, when the Temple of Aphrodite was converted into a Christian church. In the Middle Ages, Aphrodisias was a small cathedral town, eventually abandoned in the 12th century.
(Afrodisias Information Boards)
It had a palm park which appears to be an unusual feature. Its basilica was not a church but a civic building and on its walls the maximum prices of all goods sold in this city (and across the region governed by the Romans) were inscribed in stone. Overcharging was punishable by death. Of note an African lion was worth five slaves!
Sebasteion means ‘great’ and it corresponds to the Latin word Avgustus which was originally a Greek word. There is no another Sebasteion in “the East of Roma” as particularly large and rich from the point of its reliefs. The structure is located on a main street, starting from the northern gate and ending at the theatre. Construction of this cult centre started during the reign of Emperor Tiberius and was completed during the reign of Nero (BC 54-68). The main structures of this cultural centre was demolished and rebuilt several times due to earthquakes.
A combination of stylistic and historical evidence suggests that the Stadium was part of the monumental building program undertaken in the city in the first century A. D. The Stadium has a peculiar form in that it has two sphendonai (curved ends) rather than one. It is one of a small group of such stadia in the Greek world that epigraphical evidence suggests had a specific name: στάδιον ἀμφιθέατρον (“amphitheatral stadium”). The unusually complete archaeological record at Aphrodisias indicates that throughout the Imperial period the Stadium was used not only for Greek athletic competitions, but also for Roman spectacles such as gladiatorial games and venationes (animal “hunts”). In Late Antiquity a small stone amphitheater was built into its eastern sphendone, obliterating part of the Stadium’s running track. It is argued that this was a way of making permanent an arrangement that had always been temporary in past centuries. Gladiatorial contests had largely ceased by the time that the amphitheater was built into the Stadium, indicating that amphitheaters such as this one were intended not for gladiatorial games, as is often supposed, but for the venationes that seem to have flourished at the site well into the sixth century, long after they had been officially banned in all cities of the eastern Roman empire.
Kathryn Welch 1998 https://www.jstor.org/stable/506401
The Tetrapylon was a monumental gateway to the Sanctuary of Aphrodite built c. AD 200. It led from a main north-south street into a large forecourt in front of the Temple. Its decoration has a richness typical of the second century AD. The inner (west) façade is meant to surprise the visitor with its ‘broken’ pediment design and carved decoration that is even more extravagant than that of the outer (street) façade. A complete archaeological and scientific reconstruction (anastylosis) of the monument was completed in 1991. It was made possible by the extraordinary preservation of the structure as around 85% of its original marble blocks survive.
(Afrodisias Information Board)
We wondered how the city had become so prosperous and found out later that it was in part because of the quality of stone carvings which it produced using high quality marble from a nearby quarry.
We departed Aphrodisias at 4pm, driving cross-country, eschewing motorways for a mountain pass that took us up to 1400 m (from 700m) and through the town of Babadağ (father mountain).
We arrived in Pamukkale at nightfall after a couple of failed attempts to find accommodation in less commercialised nearby towns. One room and breakfast for 2 nights at Kervansaray Hotel cost us just 3000 TL (ie £15 each per night). Although it was the end of season there were still a few restaurants open but the menus relected the touristy nature of the town. We settled on the most ‘authentic’ looking one “Ottoman House”. The pictures look great. The food was average at best.
Cycling and Walking in Turkey 