Aphrodisias
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How it came to be
Aphrodisias lay in a valley of ancient Caria in south-western Turkey. A temple of Aphrodite stood here from the 3rd century BC, about a century before the city was founded as a city-state in the early 2nd century BC.
Marble from quarries north-east of the city made it a centre of sculpture. Its sculptors worked across the Roman Empire, and their signatures appear on works from Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli. The city built the Sebasteion, a complex for the cult of Augustus and the Julio-Claudian emperors, and some 2,000 inscriptions survive. The temple of Aphrodite was turned into a church around AD 500.
In 1961 the Turkish-born archaeologist Kenan Erim began systematic excavation and led it until his death in 1990. R.R.R. Smith has directed the work since 1991. The city and its quarries were inscribed on 9 July 2017.
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