Byzantine Palace

The Byzantine Palace of Ephesus, also known by the Turkish name Sarhoç Hamam, referring to its bathing part, is a large public building of the late Roman city of Ephesus. Located about 70 m southeast of the episcopéion, this extensive complex was long identified as a Byzantine bath establishment. It indeed includes a significant thermal section to the north (plan opposite, E), a large octagonal reception hall to the south, preceded by a long hall with two apses to the west.

Plan

The orientation of the baths differs from that of the rest of the construction: they are Roman baths of the 1st century, oriented according to the direction of the nearby Processional Way. The interior arrangements allow the identification of the frigidarium, the tepidarium and the caldarium.

They were preserved in Late Antiquity during the construction on the site of a much larger building, dominated by an imposing tetraconch reception hall to the South (A): it presents itself as a square of 19 m on each side, whose corners are occupied by semi‑circular niches, giving it this interior tetraconch shape, and the sides by doors of varying dimensions. The widest is a large bay opening to the East toward a smaller hall with a semi‑circular apse (B). The South door leads to another small hall with an apse on which opens to the East a long narrow hall, terminated to the East by another, smaller apse (C): it could be a later chapel. The North door gives access to a long corridor that separates this part of the building from the baths. Finally, the West door is the main entrance to the room: it leads, through a small square vestibule flanked by two secondary rooms, to a large oblong hall (45 m long) oriented from North to South and terminated by two apses (D), one of which to the North is provided with niches. This would be the antechamber of the reception hall, on the façade of the monument.

The construction of the whole complex is very careful, in opus mixtum. The large central hall is decorated with painted stucco on the walls and a mosaic pavement, like the neighboring apse hall.

Identification and dating

The dating and identification of the complex are very uncertain: C. Foss suggests that it is the palace of the proconsul of Asia, whose construction would be placed under Diocletian, by analogy with the other tetrarchic palaces. The large tetraconch hall preceded by the double‑apse antechamber indeed recalls, by its plan and construction technique, the Octagon of the Galère Palace in Thessaloniki, dated between 308 and 311, as well as, to a lesser extent, the Roman villa of the Casale at Piazza Armerina. The apse hall would then be the audience hall where the proconsul would sit.

This identification of the complex as a late antique official and administrative residence has been generally accepted, although recently the hypothesis of a thermal complex has resurfaced. The dating is also contested: the quality of the construction has led to placing it in the Roman period, or conversely to pushing it back to the 7th century, making the high official responsible for its erection the strategos of the Thracesian theme rather than the proconsul of Asia.