Hierapolis Archaeology Museum

The museum is not a separate building: it is housed within the surviving sections of Hierapolis's great Roman bath. The structure was restored in the 1970s, and once the arrangements were complete, it opened as a museum on 1 February 1984.

This gives the visit a distinctive character: the space holding the artefacts is itself an artefact. The scale of the vaulted halls makes it easier to picture the standing state of the ruin seen outside.

The bath was one of the city's largest-scale buildings and stands in the southern part of the site, just above the travertine terraces. Some of the surviving vaulted sections have been converted into the museum, while others have been left open to the sky; walking between the two conveys the building's original scale.

The collection does not consist of finds from a single site. Alongside Hierapolis, works from Laodicea, Colossae, Tripolis and Attuda, as well as pieces gathered from various points across the Lycus (Çürüksu) valley, are brought together here.

For those touring the valley, this makes the museum a gathering point: some of the statues and reliefs you will not see on site at Laodicea or at Tripolis near Buldan are held in these halls.

The museum consists of three enclosed halls and one open-air display area: the Hall of Sarcophagi and Statues, the Hall of Theatre Finds, and the Hall of Small Finds.

The best-known pieces in the sarcophagi section are the Garland Sarcophagus and the Columned Sarcophagus; among the statues is a figure of Attis. Among the reliefs, those depicting gladiator fights and bull games are the most tangible evidence of the city's culture of public spectacle.

The Hall of Theatre Finds holds the reliefs taken down from the stage building of the theatre seen outside — visiting here after touring the theatre completes the decoration you could not see in place there.

In the open-air display area outside the enclosed halls, column capitals, inscribed blocks and larger architectural pieces are lined up. This is the section most visitors pass through quickly, even though the inscriptions are the most direct source on the city's everyday life.

As a matter of visiting order, it helps to leave the museum for the end of the site tour: after seeing the theatre, the necropolis and the streets, the pieces here fall into place. The reverse order is also possible, but it makes the gaps on the site harder to picture.