About 270 metres long, with thirty rows of seating and room for thirty thousand; closed at both ends, it is an unusual structure among Greek stadiums.
Built in the 1st century AD, the stadium is about 270 metres long and 59 metres wide. It carries thirty rows of seating steps and could hold about thirty thousand people — a striking capacity set against the population of the city.
The structure is held to be the best preserved of the stadiums that have come down to us from the ancient world; it is also one of the largest. It lies at the northern end of the site and forms the widest open volume of the archaeological site.
Greek stadiums are typically horseshoe-shaped, open at one end. The stadium at Aphrodisias, however, is closed at both ends; this makes it unusual within its own type and allows the rows of spectators to form an unbroken ring.
Because most of the seating steps stand in place, the scale is grasped directly by eye rather than from a drawing: a visitor looking from one end to the other does not have to guess what volume a crowd of thirty thousand fills.
The stadium hosted the traditional Greek athletic contests: running, long jump, wrestling, discus and javelin. In the Roman period its use widened and gladiatorial combats entered the programme as well.
This double use sums up the city's cultural position — a Greek-speaking Anatolian city added Rome's tradition of spectacle to a building of its own.
The monumental gate opening onto the sanctuary of Aphrodite; with its sixteen columns set out in four rows and their spiral-fluted shafts, it is the emblem of the city. What stands today was arrived at by returning most of its stones to their places.
A building complex dedicated to the imperial cult, made up of two three-storey porticoes; with its marble reliefs it carries a visual programme with few equals in the Roman world.
The museum where the statues, reliefs and sarcophagi from the excavation are displayed; one of the rare examples built within the archaeological site itself. A substantial part of the Sebasteion reliefs is here.
