South Agora Gate
Aphrodisias, Asia minor (Turkey)
1st century CE
The last great project in the South Agora was the Agora Gate, a monumental columnar facade designed to close the urban scenography of this great public piazza.
The so-called Agora Gate was a colossal baroque facade which closed the east end of the South Agora. It was built in the mid-second century CE and consisted of an eight-bayed, two-storeyed columnar scaenae frons (stage front) framed by two pyrgoi (towers), beneath which ran two barrel-vaulted entrance tunnels. This façade accumulated a great display of portrait statuary representing Antonine emperors and local benefactors. A deep basin or nymphaeum was constructed in front of the façade in the fifth century CE from re-used material, including a remarkable series of balustrade reliefs with mythological subjects taken from an unknown second-century building.
Sources: 1, 2, 3
