Hierapolis

We are staying last night and tonight at a spa hotel in Pamukkale, which means "Cotton Castle." The town is named for the brilliant white mineral cliffs here, created from spring water filled with calcium, looking like the Niagara Falls suddenly deep-frozen. Hierapolis sits at the top of these cliffs. Colossae and Laodicea are just a few miles away (see Col 4:13, where all three are mentioned together).

Necropolis

Hierapolis is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Both it and Laodicea are large and amazing excavations, but Colossae is still just a tall, irregular, grass-covered hill where one can see stones peeking through the ground.

Tomb half-buried in calcium deposits of "cotton castle"

Martyrion of Philip overlooking city and cotton castle

Hierapolis dates from at least the 2^nd century BCE and perhaps the 4^th, and reached its zenith in the 2^nd cent CE. It was built by the Phrygians (King Midas with the golden touch was a Phrygian) and known for its textiles of cotton and wool, purple dyes, and carpets. At the northern end of the city is an enormous necropolis—the road runs for a mile—filled with more than a thousand tombs and sarcophagi—unimaginable wealth must have gone into these. Some have faces of Medusa carved into them to scare grave robbers away, but it apparently didn’t work.

One tomb was a little too close to the spring…

Up on the mountain overlooking Hierapolis, with a view down into the white cliffs, is the Martyrion of St. Philip. According to the guidebook it’s unclear whether this is Philip the disciple/apostle or Philip the father of the four prophet daughters, who in Acts 21 lived in Caesarea. I vote for the disciple, who was born in Bethsaida by the Sea of Galilee and was supposed to have been crucified upside down here. The Martyrion was built in the fifth century as an octagonal church, and even though only some of the walls remain it’s still quite lovely.

Also further down the mountain is one of the best-preserved large Roman theaters in the world. Or, if you’ve been to a few (Wikipedia lists them as being found in 18 modern countries from the U.K. and Portugal to Tunisia and Syria), “another Roman theater.” So many in picturesque spots, as this one is. Turkey has more than any other country, and we’ve already seen four of them.

Theater

The spa in Hierapolis is still used and Roman columns are still lying around in the water.