Hierapolis: A Hellenistic and Roman City in Türkiye
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.8
- Popularity
- High
- Country
- Turkey
- Primary era
- Classical
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Iron Age, Classical, Medieval
- Civilizations
- Byzantine, Kingdom of Pergamon, Phrygian, Roman, Seleucid, Seljuk
- Site type
- City
On this page23 sections
History
Hierapolis is an ancient Hellenistic Greek city in Türkiye, beside modern Pamukkale, built beside hot springs on the site of an earlier Phrygian religious center. Founded by the Seleucid dynasty in the third century BC, it developed through the Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Seljuk, and medieval periods. Its thermal waters supported a spa and healing center, while its location on the road between Iconium and Ephesus connected it with the Aegean region.
Phrygian Sanctuary and Hellenistic Foundation
The earliest known settlement at the site reaches back to the Iron Age. Round huts identified in the Northern Necropolis in 2016 belonged to a large settlement that probably extended along the side of Cökelez Mountain above the Lycus River plain. During the first half of the seventh century BC, a Phrygian temple dedicated to Cybele, the Anatolian mother goddess later adopted into Greek and Roman religion, was probably built beside a cave and the surrounding rocks. The sanctuary served communities in the Lycus valley before Greek settlers gradually incorporated its cult into their own religious system.
The Seleucids, the Hellenistic dynasty founded by Seleucus I after the division of Alexander the Great’s empire, founded Hierapolis during the reign of Antiochus I, probably in the third century BC. Eumenes of Pergamon granted the settlement polis status, or the formal standing of a Greek city, during the second century BC. The hot springs were already being used as a spa by at least the second century BC, and Hierapolis later became a healing center where physicians used the thermal waters in treating patients.
The city’s name appears as “Hieropolis” on bronze coins minted during the second century BC. Its connection either with the original temple or with Hiera, a figure associated with the Attalid dynasty of Pergamon, remains uncertain. The later name Hierapolis means “Holy City.” The city became known for woolen textiles and dyes, adding manufacturing and trade to its religious and medical importance.
Religion, Migration, and Pergamene Rule
The cave beneath the early sanctuary released poisonous gases, giving the religious landscape an association with the underworld. After the local cult was absorbed into Greek religion, the cave sanctuary became connected with Pluto, the Greek god of the underworld, and Persephone, his associated queen. It was called the Ploutonion, or Pluto’s sanctuary. The sacred area continued to combine local Anatolian traditions with Greek religious forms.
Hierapolis also acquired a substantial Jewish community. Antiochus III sent 2,000 Jewish families from Babylon and Mesopotamia to Lydia and Phrygia, and later settlers arrived from Judea. By 62 BC, the Jewish congregation at Hierapolis was estimated at up to 50,000 people.
Wealth gained after the Battle of Magnesia in 190 BC helped expand the city. In that conflict, Antiochus III was defeated by the Roman ally Eumenes II. The subsequent Treaty of Apamea transferred much of Asia Minor to Eumenes, including Hierapolis. When Attalus III, the last Attalid ruler, bequeathed his kingdom to Rome in 133 BC, the city became part of the Roman province of Asia. It was never reorganized as a Roman colony, although Roman institutions and culture strongly influenced its development.
Earthquakes and Roman Reconstruction
An earthquake in AD 17, during the reign of the emperor Tiberius, caused extensive destruction. A still more severe earthquake in AD 60, under Nero, left Hierapolis in ruins. Imperial financial support enabled a large rebuilding program, and the Roman reconstruction established much of the form that the city retained in later centuries.
The philosopher Epictetus was born enslaved at Hierapolis in AD 50 and later became known for teaching Stoic ethics. Christianity reached the city through the influence of the apostle Paul while he was at Ephesus. Local tradition held that the apostle Philip spent his final years at Hierapolis and was martyred there around AD 80.
Prosperity and Christian Transformation
Hierapolis entered a prosperous period during the third century. The emperor Septimius Severus sponsored new buildings in gratitude to his secretary Antipater, a native of the city who had tutored the emperor’s two sons. In AD 215, Caracalla granted Hierapolis the title of neocoros, a formal civic office connected with the cult of an imperial or other major deity. The title brought privileges and religious prestige, including the right of sanctuary.
The medicinal springs attracted thousands of visitors, and the city became prominent in trade, philosophy, and the arts. Its population was said to have reached approximately 100,000 inhabitants. The emperor Valens made the last recorded imperial visit in AD 370.
Christianity became dominant during the fourth century. Christians filled the Ploutonion with stones, and the Roman baths were converted into a Christian basilica. Hierapolis first served as an episcopal see of Phrygia Pacatiana, a bishop’s seat in the late Roman province. In 531, the Byzantine emperor Justinian, who ruled from 527 to 565, raised the city’s bishop to metropolitan rank. Hierapolis continued to flourish as a Christian center during the Byzantine period.
Decline, Abandonment, and Archaeology
Persian armies devastated Hierapolis in the early seventh century. Another destructive earthquake then delayed recovery. In the twelfth century, the area came under the Seljuk Sultanate of Konya and briefly fell to crusaders under Frederick Barbarossa and their Byzantine allies in 1190. The city was abandoned about thirty years later. The Seljuks built a castle there in the thirteenth century, and the later settlement was abandoned in the late fourteenth century. An earthquake in 1354 destroyed additional remains, which were gradually covered by limestone.
Carl Humann carried out the first recorded excavations in June and July 1887 and published his excavation notes in 1889. Italian archaeological research began in 1957 under Paolo Verzone and continued through 2008, when restoration work began. The work re-erected columns along the main street, uncovered Byzantine houses including an eleventh-century courtyard house, and excavated architectural sculpture. Many statues and friezes were transferred to museums in London, Berlin, and Rome.
The former Roman baths now house the Hierapolis Archaeological Museum, which presents material from Hierapolis and other settlements in the Lycus valley alongside parts of the bath complex itself. Hierapolis-Pamukkale was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988 as a mixed cultural and natural property, recognizing the ancient city together with its travertine landscape and hot springs.
Remains
Hierapolis occupies a terrace about 300 feet above the Lycus River, across the valley from Laodicea on the Lycus and beside the travertine terraces of Pamukkale. Its streets, gates, sanctuaries, theatres, baths, and burial grounds extend across the terrace and along the roads beyond the city walls. Limestone and travertine dominate the surviving construction, while marble was used for architectural decoration, seats, sarcophagi, inscriptions, and sculpture.
Urban Layout and Gates
Main Street and Colonnaded Road
The Hellenistic city followed a grid in which streets ran parallel or perpendicular to the principal thoroughfare. The main north-south street ran near the cliff and travertine terraces for approximately 1,500 metres. It was about 13.5 metres wide and bordered by arcades, while the side streets measured about 3 metres across. In the Roman period, the plateia, or principal city avenue, was approximately 14 metres wide and crossed the settlement, linking the southern exit with the road to Laodicea on the Lycus and Colossae.
The colonnaded road continued past the Nymphaeum. Stone paving, columns, and other architectural elements survive, together with evidence for shops, statues, and canals beneath the road. Two large gates built at the end of the first century AD stood outside the city walls.
Domitian Gate and Northern Fortifications
Near the northern city gate stands the Domitian Gate, a triumphal arch built by the proconsul Julius Frontinus between AD 84 and 86. It has three openings, carefully squared travertine blocks, simple cornice mouldings, and two circular towers.
The northern gate formed part of a fortification system built during the Theodosian period in the late fourth century. A symmetrical southern gate completed the arrangement. The northern gate used stone taken from the demolished Agora and was flanked by two square towers. Four marble brackets with lion, panther, and Gorgon heads were found collapsed in front of it. Their imagery had been reused as protective objects intended to avert harmful forces.
The Theatre
The theatre was probably built under Hadrian after the earthquake of AD 60 and was substantially rebuilt under Septimius Severus. Its facade measures approximately 91 metres in length. The auditorium originally contained fifty rows of seats arranged in sections by eight intermediate stairways. Two vaulted passages led to the main internal passage, or diazoma, and to an imperial box. A wall 1.83 metres high surrounded the orchestra, the semicircular performance area.
During the Severan rebuilding, the earlier stage facade was replaced by a monumental three-storey structure flanked by two large side buildings. Dedicatory inscriptions were placed on its entablatures, the horizontal architectural bands above the columns, while sculptural reliefs with mythological subjects filled the storeys. Marble seats replaced the earlier limestone seating, and a high podium was added to the orchestra for animal spectacles and gladiatorial performances.
The stage was approximately 3.7 metres high and had five doors and six niches. Ten marble columns stood before it, decorated with alternating straight and curved segments. Three rows of columns occupied the rear stage wall. Those in the front row stood on octagonal bases and had no fluting. The auditorium held approximately 15,000 spectators and was divided by a principal passage. Its lower section originally had twenty rows and its upper section twenty-five, although thirty rows survive completely. Eight vertical passageways divided the seating into nine aisles, and the two-storey proscenium had decorated side niches.
A relief shows Septimius Severus with Julia Domna, Caracalla, Geta, and Jupiter. The orchestra was probably converted into an arena for aquatic spectacles in AD 352. Statues, reliefs of Apollo, Dionysus, and Diana, and other decorative elements from the theatre are displayed in the local museum. Major restoration of the theatre took place between 2004 and 2014.
Sacred Area and Water Monument
Temple of Apollo Lairbenos
The Temple of Apollo Lairbenos was dedicated to Hierapolis’s principal god during the late Hellenistic period. Apollo Lairbenos combined the Greek god Apollo with the Anatolian deity Lairbenos, associated with the sun. The sacred area also contained temples or shrines connected with Cybele, Artemis, Pluto, and Poseidon.
The Hellenistic temple stood within a Doric peribolos, an enclosing wall around a sacred building, measuring approximately 15 by 20 metres. Only its foundations survive. The wider sanctuary occupied an area about 70 metres long enclosed by a sacred boundary. The temple had a marble staircase and was built against the hill at its rear. A partially excavated marble portico surrounded the southern, western, and northern sides of the enclosure. Its pilasters carried fluted Doric half-columns with capitals decorated by astragals, beads, and ovolos.
Two Ionic capitals preserved in the museum and a Corinthian capital dated to the first century AD have been associated with an earlier temple on the site. A smaller Roman temple was reconstructed in the third century from blocks recycled from the older building. Its marble floor survives.
Ploutonion
The Ploutonion, or Pluto’s Gate, was a small cave sanctuary beside the Apollo temple and within the sacred area. Its entrance, large enough for one person, was reached through a fenced opening and descending steps. Behind a roofed chamber measuring about 3 square metres, a deep cleft in the rock carried fast-flowing hot water and released suffocating carbon dioxide produced by underground geological activity.
An enclosed area of approximately 2,000 square metres lay in front of the sanctuary, where the gas could reach lethal concentrations. Priests used animals to demonstrate the danger, while visitors could consult Pluto’s oracle for payment. The sanctuary and the Apollo temple were deliberately built over the surface trace of a seismic fault associated with underground gases and thermal water. During the Christian period, the entrance was walled up, and it was later unearthed. A second structure about 200 metres east of the Apollo temple has also been identified as the Ploutonion mentioned by ancient writers and bears an associated inscription.
Nymphaeum
The Nymphaeum was a second-century AD sanctuary of the water nymphs and a monumental fountain in front of the Apollo temple. It supplied urban houses through a network of pipes and had a U-shaped plan along the continuation of the main colonnaded road.
The fountain was repaired in the fifth century. Its retaining wall incorporated material from the Apollo temple’s enclosure and obstructed the view of the pagan sanctuary. A Byzantine gate was added in the sixth century. The surviving structure consists of the rear wall and two side walls, whose niches and surfaces were decorated with statues. Two excavated statues of priestesses are displayed in the local museum.
Necropolis and Tombs
The necropolis extends for more than 2 kilometres beyond the city walls and outer baths. It follows the old roads toward Phrygian Tripolis and Sardis and the routes south toward Laodicea and Colossae. The burial grounds occupy the northern, eastern, and southern approaches to Hierapolis, and most of the tombs have been excavated. Approximately 1,200 tombs are known.
Burial Forms
Most tombs were built from local limestone, although marble was also used. The principal groups date from the late Hellenistic period, with substantial numbers from the Roman and early Christian periods. They served residents as well as people who had come to Hierapolis for medical treatment.
The cemetery includes simple graves, sarcophagi placed on raised supports or cut into the rock, circular tumuli, or burial mounds, with narrow passages leading to vaulted chambers, and large family tombs that sometimes resemble small temples. Many marble sarcophagi have pitched roofs, relief decoration, and Greek epitaphs naming the dead and describing their occupations and virtues. The oldest tombs are Hellenistic tumuli on the eastern side of the foothill. Their chambers were built from carefully cut stone forming a cylindrical drum and were reached through a corridor. Other burials were cut directly into the rock, while some northern tombs were enclosed by walls and accompanied by gardens with flowers and cypress trees.
Inscribed and Technological Monuments
Travertine funerary monuments include simple sarcophagi and house-shaped tombs containing two or more coffins. Some sarcophagi carry inscriptions using the term “bomas,” an altar symbol associated with the exaltation of a high-status deceased person. The tomb of Tiberius Claudius Talamos, on the road to Laodicea and Colossae, has a long inscription and a house-like facade.
The sarcophagus of Marcus Aurelius Ammianos, a local miller, bears a relief of an early machine using a crank and connecting-rod mechanism. It shows a waterwheel powered by a mill race, a gear train, and two frame saws cutting rectangular stone blocks. The accompanying inscription is in Greek. In June 2014, the sarcophagus was stored at the Hierapolis Museum rather than displayed.
Earthquake damage is visible across the necropolis, including a completely demolished travertine zone. A tomb with a long inscription and nearby marble blocks bearing Early Hellenistic inscriptions were found during excavation, which continued in the northern part of the cemetery.
Martyrium of Saint Philip
The Martyrium of Saint Philip, a Christian shrine commemorating a martyr, stands on a hill outside the northeastern section of the city walls. It is described as a fifth-century structure, although its exact date remains uncertain. The building was said to contain Philip’s tomb at its center, while a possible gravesite was announced about 40 metres away in 2011.
The Martyrium burned at the end of the fifth or beginning of the sixth century, leaving fire marks on its columns. Its central octagonal structure measured 20 metres across and stood beneath a wooden dome covered with lead tiles. Eight rectangular rooms surrounded the center, each reached through three arches. Four rooms served as entrances and four as chapels. Heptagonal chapels with triangular apses occupied the spaces between them. The apses had mosaic decoration, and a marble-columned arcade surrounded the building. Marble panels faced the walls.
Thermal Baths and Museum
Great Baths and Thermal Pools
The Great Baths were centered on natural thermal pools and formed one of the largest buildings at Hierapolis. Large stone blocks, laid without cement, created interconnected enclosed and open areas. Deep internal niches survive within the complex, which included spaces identified as baths, a library, and a gymnasium.
The thermal water ranges from 36 to 57 degrees Celsius, with a pH of 5.8 and a reported radon level of 1,480 pCi/L. Its mineral content includes bicarbonate, sulfate, carbon dioxide, iron, and radioactive components. The water was regarded as suitable for bathing, showering, and drinking cures. The present Antique Pool took its shape after a seventh-century earthquake caused a marble portico with Ionic elements to collapse into the spring.
Northern Bath Complex
A second bath complex was built outside the northern gate at the beginning of the third century AD. Around the fifth century, it was converted into a church. The building had stuccoed vaulted ceilings and halls decorated with marble slabs.
Archaeology Museum
The former Great Baths now contain the Archaeology Museum. Its exhibition areas occupy three enclosed sections of the bath complex and open spaces on the eastern side, once associated with the library and gymnasium. The collections include statues, reliefs, sarcophagi, tombstones, bases, columns, inscriptions, and decorative elements from the site. Material from the theatre includes restored reliefs, sculptural representations, and inscriptions.
Modern hotels once built among the ancient remains caused partial destruction before they were removed. Subsequent excavation and restoration recovered or re-erected parts of the ancient fabric, including columns along the main street and Byzantine domestic buildings.
