Heroon of Pericles

Heroon Periclis

MausoleumLycia et Pamphylia · Limyra, near Turunçova, Antalya Province, TurkeyBuilt 370 BCE

About

The Lycian dynast Pericles raised this Ionic temple tomb against the acropolis wall of Limyra around 370 BCE, capping his rule over a briefly unified Lycia won in defiance of Persian satraps. Caryatid-like female figures held up its roofline while pediment reliefs showed Perseus beheading Medusa, a mythic claim to heroic descent. The temple tomb still crowned its hillside more than four centuries later, by then absorbed into Roman Lycia et Pamphylia.

What happened here

The tomb is built where the traffic is: on the road out of town, facing the carriageway, close enough to read at walking pace. That is the design brief. Inside there may be a single chamber for one family or niches for dozens, with cremation urns or, increasingly, bodies laid out. Outside there is a portrait, an inscription giving the dead their offices and their years, and often a bench, because visitors come back. The family returns on the anniversary and at the February festival of the dead, brings wine and food, and eats a meal at the graveside. Endowments are left to keep it up and lawsuits follow when they are not honoured. A grand tomb is the last public building a family gets to commission.