Denizli Tripolis Archaeological Site

Tripolis lies in Yenicekent, in Denizli's Buldan district, at the north-western end of the Lykos (Çürüksu) valley. Its public and civic buildings spread over about three square kilometres on the southern slope of a hill that dominates the valley. Surveys at the nearby mounds of Hamambükü and Yenice/Akkaya show that people lived in this area as early as the Late Neolithic and Early Chalcolithic.

The city's importance came from the road. Two routes starting at Pergamon and Smyrna joined at Sardis, reached Tripolis via Philadelphia, and then went on towards Hierapolis and Laodikeia and into inner Anatolia. The city first appears in the Hellenistic era as Apollonia and was briefly called Antoniopolis after Mark Antony's visit in 41 BC. Coins from Augustus onwards all read Tripolis. After Pergamon's victory at Magnesia, the region came under Attalid rule and passed to Rome when Attalos III died in 133 BC.

Excavations, run since 2012 under Prof. Dr. Bahadır Duman for the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and Pamukkale University, have excavated and restored many buildings in the city centre. They include a residential quarter, a church, a colonnaded street, a monumental fountain, the main street, a vaulted structure, a podium building, the agora, an arched building, shops and a sanctuary.