Aphrodisias, Turkey – City of Aphrodite, Marble and Myth

Set within a fertile valley of southwestern Turkey, the ancient city of Aphrodisias is one of the most rewarding and atmospheric Greco-Roman archaeological sites in Anatolia.

Situated near the modern village of Geyre in Aydın Province, Aphrodisias was neither a great imperial capital nor an important military stronghold. Yet through its devotion to a goddess and the extraordinary skill of its sculptors, this relatively modest city became famous across the Roman world.

Its story began long before the monumental marble city visible today.

People had lived around the site since prehistoric times, while archaeological evidence for a sanctuary extends back to at least the sixth century BCE. The deity originally worshipped here appears to have been a local Carian goddess whose identity was gradually merged with that of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, beauty and fertility. By the later Hellenistic period, Aphrodite had become inseparable from the identity of the city that eventually took her name.

The Greek city-state of Aphrodisias was established in the early second century BCE during a period of increasing urbanisation across the Maeander valley and ancient Caria. Rather than replacing the older sanctuary, the new city grew around it. The sacred place of the goddess became both its spiritual centre and one of the principal reasons for its growing fame.

Aphrodite, however, would eventually connect this small city in Asia Minor with the most powerful family in Rome.

According to Greek mythology, Aphrodite was the mother of the Trojan hero Aeneas. Roman tradition regarded Aeneas as an ancestor of the Roman people, while Julius Caesar and the Julian family claimed descent through his son Iulus. To the Romans, therefore, Aphrodite could be understood as Venus Genetrix, Venus the ancestral mother.

For Aphrodisias, this mythological connection became politically invaluable.

During the turbulent first century BCE, the city aligned itself with Rome. Julius Caesar showed favour towards the sanctuary, while Octavian, the future emperor Augustus, helped secure privileges that gave Aphrodisias an unusually protected position within the Roman world. In 39 BCE, the Roman Senate confirmed the city’s freedom, autonomy, and immunity from taxation, privileges that succeeding emperors continued to recognise.

A particularly important figure in this relationship was Gaius Julius Zoilos, a native of Aphrodisias who had been enslaved but later gained his freedom and became associated with Octavian. Zoilos returned home a wealthy man and became one of the city’s greatest benefactors. He financed major building projects, including the first phase of the Temple of Aphrodite, the marble stage building of the theatre, and part of the Agora.

The transformation of Aphrodisias had begun.

Although ancient standards would classify it as only a medium-sized city, with perhaps 10,000 inhabitants, its public architecture possessed a grandeur that belonged to somewhere much larger. Temples, colonnades and civic buildings were increasingly constructed from the excellent marble quarried only a few kilometres away.

Aphrodisias gained fame for its marble artistry.

The surrounding quarries supplied high-quality white and blue-grey stone, but access to marble alone does not explain the city’s artistic success. Over generations, Aphrodisian craftsmen developed extraordinary skill in transforming it into portraits, mythological figures, sarcophagi, and elaborate architectural decoration.

By the Roman period, sculptors from Aphrodisias had gained an international reputation.

Their work travelled throughout the empire, and Aphrodisian sculptors themselves accepted prestigious commissions far from home. Signatures belonging to sculptors from the city have even appeared on important statues discovered at Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli in Italy, a remarkable connection between two archaeological sites that reveal the cosmopolitan world of the Roman Empire.

Furthermore, excavations at Aphrodisias have revealed a much more uncommon find: a genuine sculptor’s studio.

Tools, unfinished statues, and hundreds of sculptural fragments were found there, together with practice pieces carved by apprentices learning their craft. These discoveries allow us to glimpse not merely the finished masterpieces but the people who created them, masters teaching apprentices how to coax a face, a fold of clothing, or the body of a god from a block of marble.

At the very core of the city’s life and energy was the grand Temple of Aphrodite.

The monumental temple visible through archaeology was begun in the 30s BCE with support from Zoilos. It was an elegant Ionic building constructed entirely from marble, with its central chamber eventually surrounded by a colonnade. Further additions during the Roman period enclosed it within an increasingly elaborate sanctuary.

Inside stood the cult image of the Aphrodite of Aphrodisias.

She was not quite the familiar nude Aphrodite represented in much Greek art. The local goddess retained something older and more mysterious. Her distinctive cult image showed a rigid, elaborately clothed divine figure whose costume contained images associated with the natural and divine worlds. The goddess of classical Greece had merged with a much older Anatolian religious tradition.

That mixture of cultures is one of the most fascinating characteristics of Aphrodisias.

Greek mythology, Carian traditions, and Roman imperial ideas were not simply placed alongside one another. They became intertwined.

This is nowhere more brilliantly displayed than in the Sebasteion.

Built between approximately 20 and 60 CE, the Sebasteion was a magnificent sanctuary dedicated jointly to Aphrodite and the Julio-Claudian emperors. A long ceremonial avenue led towards a temple and was flanked on either side by three-storeyed marble facades filled with sculpted reliefs.

The imagery was extraordinary.

Gods and heroes appeared beside Roman emperors. Episodes from Greek mythology shared the same architectural setting as representations of peoples and territories brought under Roman power. Aphrodite appeared alongside Aeneas, reinforcing the legendary ancestry through which Rome’s ruling dynasty connected itself with the goddess of Aphrodisias.

Among the surviving reliefs are scenes involving Achilles, Odysseus, and other figures from the Greek mythical world, while others portray emperors in heroic or divine form.

The Sebasteion therefore functioned almost like an enormous story carved in marble, mythology and imperial power brought together to explain Rome’s place in the world.

Many of its surviving reliefs are now displayed in the Aphrodisias Museum, where they can be viewed at close range. Their quality provides some of the clearest evidence of why the city’s sculptors were held in such high regard.

Another of Aphrodisias’s most memorable monuments is the magnificent Tetrapylon.

Constructed around 200 CE as the monumental entrance to the outer sanctuary of Aphrodite, its name simply means “four gates”. Four groups of Corinthian columns support elaborately carved pediments, creating a ceremonial gateway of remarkable elegance. Visitors approaching the sanctuary would pass through it before entering the sacred precinct of the goddess.

Today, the reconstructed Tetrapylon has become one of the defining images of Aphrodisias.

Yet perhaps the monument that best conveys the scale and prosperity of the city is its extraordinary stadium.

Built in the latter first century CE on the northern edge of Aphrodisias, it measures approximately 270 metres long and could accommodate around 30,000 spectators, several times the estimated population of the city itself. It remains the best-preserved ancient Greek stadium known and one of the largest surviving anywhere in the ancient world.

Traditional Greek athletic competitions were held here, including running, wrestling, discus, and javelin events. Under Roman influence, its programme expanded to include gladiatorial combat and fights involving wild animals. During the late fifth century CE, one end was modified to create a more specialised arena for such spectacles.

The stadium’s extraordinary capacity also reveals that the festivals of Aphrodisias attracted visitors from far beyond the city itself.

The theatre offers another glimpse into public life.

Its auditorium was built against an ancient settlement mound during the late Hellenistic period, while Zoilos financed an elaborate three-storeyed marble stage building before 28 BCE. Originally capable of seating around 7,000 people, the theatre accommodated dramatic performances but also served as a meeting place for the citizens of Aphrodisias.

During Roman rule, the building was altered to suit popular tastes. In the second century CE, the orchestra was lowered to create a protected arena for gladiatorial contests and animal spectacles.

Elsewhere stood the great Hadrianic Baths, the Agora and the Council House, each contributing to the impression of a city determined to express its prosperity through architecture and marble.

Aphrodisias continued to flourish long after the first centuries of Roman rule. Indeed, its importance increased in the latter third century CE when it became the capital of the newly created Roman province of Caria. Contrary to the idea that the city entered immediate decline during Late Antiquity, the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries remained an important period in its history.

But profound change was coming.

Christianity gradually transformed the religious identity of the city. Aphrodisias became the seat of a bishop, while the old pagan traditions that had defined the community for centuries increasingly came under pressure.

The greatest transformation occurred at the sanctuary itself.

During the middle or later fifth century CE, the Temple of Aphrodite was converted into a large Christian cathedral dedicated to the Archangel Michael. It was an extraordinary architectural undertaking. The ancient temple was effectively dismantled and reconstructed, with its columns repositioned to create the much larger interior required for a basilica.

The transformation is filled with powerful symbolism.

The building that had once housed the cult statue of Aphrodite, the goddess whose name, myths, and sacred ancestry had helped bring prosperity to the city, now stood at the centre of a Christian community.

Yet the old world did not disappear overnight.

Archaeology at Aphrodisias has revealed evidence that pagan philosophical and cultural traditions remained surprisingly persistent even as Christianity became dominant. The city seems to have negotiated the passage from one religious world into another gradually, and sometimes uneasily.

The decisive decline of the classical city came in the early seventh century CE.

A major earthquake around 620 caused severe damage, but the disappearance of classical urban life was not the result of a single catastrophe. Persian and later Arab incursions destabilised Asia Minor, while the Byzantine imperial administration increasingly struggled to sustain the network of provincial cities that had characterised the Roman world. The great public spaces of Aphrodisias were gradually abandoned.

A smaller community survived around the fortified Theatre Hill, and the settlement continued as a Byzantine episcopal centre until around 1200. The ancient city had contracted dramatically, but it had not simply vanished after the first earthquake or invasion.

Centuries later, the Turkish village of Geyre developed among the ancient ruins.

Modern archaeological investigation began gradually, but the transformation in our knowledge of Aphrodisias came with systematic excavation from 1961 under archaeologist Kenan Erim and New York University. Work has continued ever since, revealing one of the richest collections of architecture, inscriptions, and sculpture from any ancient city in the eastern Mediterranean.

The nearby marble quarries are now recognised as an essential part of the story.

Without them, there could have been no extraordinary sculptural tradition and perhaps no marble city on the scale that eventually developed. UNESCO added Aphrodisias and its ancient quarries to the World Heritage List together in 2017.

What makes Aphrodisias so memorable, however, is not simply the survival of individual monuments.

The stadium is truly splendid. The Tetrapylon is among the most elegant ancient gateways in Anatolia. The Sebasteion’s reliefs are considered some of the most important sculptural discoveries of the Roman period.

But together they reveal something more interesting: a city whose identity was shaped by a remarkable convergence of myth, marble and history.

A local Anatolian goddess became Aphrodite. Her mythical son Aeneas connected the city with Rome. And generations of sculptors transformed the marble of the surrounding hills into works admired across an empire.

Of the cities in antiquity, Aphrodisias was not among the largest. There was no need for it to be.

Through its goddess and its artists, its name travelled far beyond the valley in which it stood.

View a selection of images from Aphrodisias.

All images, text, and content © Steven Sklifas.