Central Agora

The Central Agora was one of the principal public squares of Laodicea on the Lycus, the ancient city whose ruins lie near modern Denizli. Measuring roughly 112 by 60 meters, it served as a marketplace and civic gathering space connected to Syria Street, one of the grand colonnaded avenues that structured the city's layout in the Roman and early Byzantine periods. Laodicea has been under systematic excavation since 2002, and the agora today survives mainly as foundations, its original colonnades and surrounding buildings largely reduced to their footprint. Its considerable size nonetheless points to the commercial importance of Laodicea, a wealthy city in the Lycus valley known in antiquity for its wool and textile trade and later recorded as the seat of one of the seven churches addressed in the biblical Book of Revelation.