Laodikeia lies six kilometres north of Denizli, within the Eskihisar, Goncalı and Bozburun quarters that were once separate villages, and spreads over about five square kilometres. In ancient geography it sits in the middle of the Lykos valley — today the Çürüksu — where Phrygia, Lydia and Caria met. Babadağ, the ancient Salbakos, rises to the south of the valley, Çökelez to the north, Honaz, the ancient Kadmos, to the east and the Buldan mountains to the west; the Asopos stream runs west and south-west of the city, the Kapros to the south-east and the Lykos to the north-east.
People were here long before the city. Surveys in the settlement area, particularly to the west and south-west, have turned up pottery and flint of the Late Chalcolithic, around 3500 BC, and of the first phase of the Early Bronze Age, around 3000 BC, showing that the early settlement grew around the Asopos, its main source of water. Vessels found in the western necropolis belong to the Early Chalcolithic, around 5500 BC, and are the earliest finds so far recorded in the Lykos valley.
The city itself was founded in the middle of the third century BC, between 261 and 253, by the Seleucid king Antiochos II Theos, who named it after his wife Laodike. Standing where important roads met, chosen in keeping with Seleucid policy on terrain, and holding a military, administrative and economic position at once, it became the main centre of the region. It first enters the historical record with the revolt of Achaios in 220 BC, when he declared himself king here and struck coins in his own name. Grave inscriptions of the third century BC already mention a market, a strategeion, a gymnasium and a theatre. Alongside the Greek pantheon the cults of Zeus Aseis and of Isis are found here, mingled with eastern belief; the founding chief god was Zeus Laodikeus.
Laodikeia stayed under Seleucid rule until the battle of Magnesia in 190 BC, fought between the Seleucids and the Romans with Pergamene support. After the Peace of Apameia in 188 BC the victorious kingdom of Pergamon took control of the region, and the city won important privileges by binding itself closely to the Attalids and to Rome; it passed fully to Rome in 130 or 129 BC.
Trade was always its business — textiles first, then marble, grain and livestock — and the buildings are on a scale to match. The stadium measures 285 by 70 metres, which the provincial governorate calls the largest in Anatolia. There are two theatres, four bath complexes, five agoras, five monumental fountains, two monumental gateways, a council house, temples, churches and colonnaded streets. Excavation and restoration have been running since 2003 under Prof. Celal Şimşek of Pamukkale University, and since 2008 without a winter break.
Several parts have been excavated, restored, re-erected and can be walked today: a 400-metre stretch of Syria Street, the East Byzantine Gate with its towers and fountain, the 2,000-square-metre house complex known as House A, Temple A, the central agora, the Septimius Severus fountain, the Laodikeia church under its protective roof, the north church, the B fountain with its public latrine and water tank, and 350 metres of Stadium Street. The finds tie the ruins to the living region: carvings of the cockerel, the pomegranate and the aubergine that are Denizli's emblems, and loom weights, a dye workshop, wool dyes and pieces of cloth that carry the local textile trade back four thousand years. The city was finally abandoned for Kaleiçi and Hisarköy after the great earthquake in the reign of the emperor Phocas, between 602 and 610.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Denizli as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 6 °C in January to 27.5 °C in July; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May, June, September and October; rainfall is heaviest in January (90 mm) and lightest in August (11 mm). Long-term means for 1957-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
Visiting hours
- Hours
- 08:00 - 21:30
