Hierapolis Travertine and Alabaster Quarries

Hierapolis

QuarryAsia · Pamukkale, Denizli Province, TurkeyBuilt 100 BCE

About

Quarries on the slopes below Hierapolis, in the Lycus Valley of Phrygia, cut narrow, deep trenches into banded travertine deposited by the region's mineral-rich hot springs. Workers extracted colorful varieties known in antiquity as alabastro fiorito and alabastro listato, streaked white, yellow, brown, and burgundy red. One breccia quarry alone is estimated to have yielded around 3,700 cubic meters of stone, cut for columns, sarcophagi, and paving across the city and beyond. The same geological process that fed the quarries also built Hierapolis's famous white travertine terraces just downhill.

What happened here

The rock is worked in benches from the top down, so that gravity does the moving. Channels are cut around a block with a pick, then it is split from the bed with iron wedges driven into a line of holes, sometimes with wooden wedges soaked to swell. Blocks are dressed roughly on the spot — no one hauls waste — and marked with the quarry, the gang, the date and the consular year, which is how the empire keeps track of what it owns. Sledges, rollers and ox teams take them to a river or the sea, because moving stone overland is the expensive part. Fine marbles are imperial monopolies. Abandoned faces still show the last unfinished cut, stopped mid-job and never resumed.