Tripolis stands on the bank of the Büyük Menderes, at the north-eastern edge of the fertile Lykos plain, within the bounds of the Yenicekent quarter of the Buldan district of Denizli. Its ancient remains spread over close to three square kilometres, and it owed its importance to its position: roads beginning at great cities of antiquity such as Smyrna, Pergamon and Ephesus met here and ran on through Hierapolis and Laodikeia to the eastern and southern parts of Anatolia, which gave this frontier city of Lydia real strategic weight.
The earliest accounts of where the city stood come from the historians and geographers of antiquity. Herodotus first places the region within Lydia, while other ancient writers report that Tripolis lay within Caria. In the Sibylline texts it appears as the Tripolis beside the Maiandros.
Although the city's history is generally traced to the Hellenistic period, archaeological material from surface surveys at the mounds of Hamambükü and Yenice, east and south-east of the city, shows that settlement on this ground reaches back to the late Neolithic and early Chalcolithic, around 5500 BC.
The city was first founded in the Hellenistic period under the name Apollonia. For a short time it was called Antoniopolis, during the triumvir Mark Antony's visit to Asia Minor in 41 BC. From the reign of Augustus onwards the name was changed for the last time to Tripolis, meaning a city formed by the coming together of three small communities or settlements.
The city was at its height in the Roman period. In the first centuries AD it was laid out anew on a grid, with avenues and streets enclosing insulae of about sixty by forty-five metres, and it gained a theatre, a stadium, a bath and gymnasium, a nymphaeum, an agora, city gates, a colonnaded street and a council house, along with buildings of domestic architecture. From the first half of the 13th century it changed hands between Byzantines and Turks, the latest traces of settlement date from that century, and in 1429 it passed to the Ottomans.
Excavation since 2012 has uncovered a residential quarter, a church, the colonnaded street, a monumental fountain, the main street, a vaulted building, a building on a podium, the agora, an arched structure and rows of shops. The excavation and restoration work is in the hands of Bahadır Duman of Pamukkale University.
To reach the site from Denizli, follow the Denizli–Aydın road for twenty-five kilometres, turn north onto the Denizli–Salihli road for ten, then take the northward turning three kilometres more to Yenicekent; the ancient city lies to the east and north of the settlement. Minibuses run from the Denizli coach station to Buldan and Yenicekent.
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 - 17:30
Getting there
- Access
- Follow the Denizli–Aydın road for twenty-five kilometres, turn north onto the Denizli–Salihli road for ten, then take the northward turning three kilometres more to Yenicekent in the Buldan district. The ancient city lies to the east and north of the settlement. Minibuses run from the Denizli coach station to Buldan and Yenicekent.
