The Turkish coast of the Aegean Sea has seen all Mediterranean civilizations pass through over the centuries. From the Hittites to the Persians, from Ionian Greece to imperial Rome, from the Byzantine to the Ottoman empire. It is not surprising that fabulous cities arose there, whose ruins are today a mandatory stop on every tourist circuit in Turkey: Troy, Pergamon, Ephesus... But beyond those famous sites where dozens of buses stop every day, suddenly emerge others that are more unknown—but no less important—and that can still be enjoyed in the solitude that has already disappeared in those other places of mass tourism.
That is the case of Aphrodisias, a minor city within the Greco-Roman world if we compare it with those previously mentioned. It is located near the current town of Geyre, province of Aydin, in the southwest of the country, and there are several curiosities that make its visit one of the hidden delights of any tour of this western area of Asia Minor.
The first singularity was its discovery. While the scientific excavations of Ephesus, for example, date back to 1863 or those of Pergamon to 1878, no one even knew about Aphrodisias well into the 20th century, beyond some archaeological tastings carried out in the area by an Italian team. in 1937. It was a coincidence that put it on the map. The Turkish photojournalist Ara Güler, a member of the Magnum agency, visited the region in 1958 with the assignment of documenting a newly built dam. Güler was surprised that the residents of the village of Geyre, where he stopped one day to rest, lived surrounded by classical stones. They stepped on the grapes in a marble sarcophagus, sat down to drink tea and chat around a hookah on an improvised bench that looked like something out of a classical theater, and used remains of columns and capitals to build their houses. When he asked them where all this came from, they showed him an area of stony hills where they used to take cattle. Güler hallucinated when he saw donkeys and sheep grazing in what was clearly a Roman stadium. Or delicate Corinthian capitals used as corral fences.
He photographed all this and sent it to Time
magazine
, which published it. The images caused a sensation in the international archaeological community and especially to a Turkish archaeologist, Kenan Tevfik Erim, who quickly came to visit the site. Erim was fascinated by the possibilities of what he saw there and after obtaining funding from the Metropolitan University of New York, he began excavations. It was 1961. He would not stop unraveling the secrets of the forgotten city until his death, in 1990. In fact, he is buried there, at the entrance of the ruins to which he dedicated three decades of his life.
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Aphrodisias was born in Assyrian times as a temple dedicated to Ishtar, their goddess of beauty. In the 3rd century BC, during the Hellenistic period, it became a sanctuary of Aphrodite, around which a small urban center began to be created. And with the annexation of Greece to the Roman Republic, the sanctuary changed its deity again, this time to Venus. Aphrodisias was only a second-rate city in the Roman empire. It barely had 50,000 inhabitants, however, it had a stadium with capacity for 30,000 spectators, a theater that could accommodate another 8,000, and luxurious buildings such as the tetrapylon arch that gave access to the Via Sacra through which pilgrims reached the temple of Aphrodite. and which can now be seen reconstructed, including 80% of its delicate friezes, columns and original capitals.
Its fame and prosperity had two reasons for being. On the one hand, the protection and favors granted to the sanctuary of Aphrodite/Venus by many Roman leaders, from Sulla to Julius Caesar, Augustus, Claudius or Nero, since the Julius family (
gens Julia
) was considered a direct descendant of Venus. On the other hand, the school of sculptors that flourished in the city at the mercy of some nearby quarries of the best marble and that turned it into one of the great centers of sculpture in classical Rome, whose works were exported to the four corners of the empire. . Something that can be seen in the dazzling collection of carvings displayed in the museum attached to the ruins and even in the excavation itself. And not only religious or civil statues: in Aphrodisias, the most renowned sarcophagi in Asia Minor were also sculpted, dozens of which still rest outdoors on the paved access road to the site.
The visit can begin at the Sebasteion, a large religious complex dedicated to Caesar Augustus and the deified emperors and of which a small part has been rebuilt, but enough to give an idea of the grandeur and size it must have had, with a double colonnade of three floors and 90 meters long completely lined with friezes, of which more than 70 have been recovered. On the way to the theater, which was inaugurated in the year 27 BC and whose cavea is preserved almost intact, you pass by the remains of a basilica (which in the Roman world was the place where justice and governance were dispensed). The building would have nothing special if it were not for the fact that when it was excavated, one of the best surviving copies of Diocletian's Edict on Maximum Prices appeared, a rule promulgated in the year 301 by this Roman emperor that set maximum prices of more than 1,300 products to try to contain the rampant inflation that afflicted the empire. “Pure gold, 72,000 denarii per pound”, “Draft horse, 100,000 denarii”, “Premium cow, 2,000 denarii”, “A slave between 16 and 40 years old suitable for agricultural or urban work, 30,000 denarii”, “ A slave of the same age, 25.00 denarii.”
A quiet walk through Aphrodisia is a trip back in time to the golden centuries (from the 1st century BC to the 2nd century) of a provincial Roman city tiled with white marble that lived on art, culture and faith. Remains of temples, homes and public buildings with numerous sculptures and inscriptions appear everywhere, such as the baths that Hadrian had built in the 2nd century. Little of the original remains of the temple of Aphrodite that gave rise to the city, since with the arrival of Christianity it was converted into a Byzantine church. In the southern Agora, an enormous elongated pool appeared, surrounded by colonnades and palm trees, which could be confused with a hippodrome, but which, in reality, was an area for rest and recreation as well as an ingenious way of draining the underground waters that surfaced and caused flooding in the city. In the
bouleterion
, a kind of miniature theater, the municipal council met; Of its semicircular auditorium, the first nine rows of seats and marble stairs are preserved intact. In the Byzantine era it was transformed into a lecture hall for readings and cultural events.
The final touch of the visit is the stadium, one of the largest in the entire Mediterranean arc and the best preserved. Surprising for a medium sized city. It is 270 meters long by 60 meters wide with an ovoid shape to improve vision from all angles of the 30,000 spectators who gathered here. It was also used for gladiator fights. Judging by the photos that Ara Güler took in 1958, he was then almost as we see him now, despite his almost 2,000 years of ailments.
Aphrodisias was chosen as one of the 10 best cities of the ancient world in 2004 and declared a UNESCO world heritage site in 2017. An essential visit on any trip to western Turkey.
Practical information
The Aphrodisias site is located on the outskirts of Geyre, 55 kilometers southeast of Nazilli and 101 kilometers from Denizli.
Open every day from 8:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. (in winter and until April 1, it closes at 5:00 p.m.).
Price: 12 euros.
Visit included in the Museum Pass Turkiye.