Temple of Hadrian

The so‑called Temple of Hadrian is a partially rebuilt sanctuary in the ancient city of Ephesus in western modern Turkey. It stands on the Kureten Street in the southwest of the city.

According to the inscription on the architrave the temple was erected in the year 117 or 118 AD in honor of Artemis of Ephesus, the Roman emperor Hadrian and the people of Ephesus by Publius Quintilius Valens Varius. Varius had already made the promise in the last years of the reign of Trajan. Parts of the pronaos were – possibly due to an earthquake – destroyed in the 4th century, but were then rebuilt.

Research history

In the 1950s the temple was excavated by the Austrian Archaeological Institute under the direction of Franz Miltner. In order to make the ruin site of Ephesus as comprehensible as possible for visitors, whole street blocks, including the Kureten Street, were cleared at that time. With the numerous building elements of the temple found there, a partial reconstruction (anastylosis) was carried out from 1957 to 1958 under the project leadership of the Viennese architect Karl Heinz Göschl. From 2009 to 2012 the archaeologist Ursula Quatember conducted new research on the building history of the temple.

Description

The building lying directly on the “Kureten Street”, one of the grand avenues of Ephesus, is partially integrated into the Scholastikia Baths behind it, a bathing complex also erected by Publius Quintilius Valens Varius. In its floor plan the temple corresponds to a tetrastyle, that is, a four‑column prostyle. In front of the only small, transverse rectangular cella, in which a statue of the emperor probably stood, there is a spacious pronaos whose façade is divided by two columns and two pilasters with Corinthian capitals. These originally supported a triangular pediment. In front of the columns and pilasters stand four inscribed bases of statues of the emperors of the first Tetrarchy: Diocletian, Constantius Chlorus, Galerius and Maximian. The statue of Maximian was later replaced by a statue of the father of Theodosius I. A Syrian arch was spanned over the two central columns, its keystone highlighted by a bust of Tyche. The architrave is adorned with a frieze of acanthus leaves and other vegetal motifs.

The interior of the vestibule is characterized by a surrounding frieze. The original is located in the museum of Selçuk. On the frieze on the left the founding myth of Ephesus is depicted with Androklos hunting boars, gods and Amazons, the latter among other things at a Dionysus festival. The right part of the frieze differs stylistically from the rest. It is assumed that this was transferred here from another building during the reconstruction after the earthquake in the 4th century.

The lintel of the entrance door to the cella is decorated with pearl and egg-and-dart mouldings. Above it, in the arch field, is the depiction of a vine-wrapped woman.

The defining elements of the façade – arch portal, flanked on the right and left by two rectangular entrances – are also found on other buildings of this period, for example in the so-called “Canopus” of the Villa Adriana at Tivoli near Rome.