High on the mountainside, with grey peaks all around, a grand marble fountain splashes in the old market square. Below it, the terraces of a whole Roman city fall away toward the valley.

First city of Pisidia

Sagalassos lies about 100 km north of Antalya, 7 km from Ağlasun in Burdur province, on Mount Akdağ in the Western Taurus Mountains at 1,450–1,700 metres. Hittite documents of the 14th century BCE mention a mountain site called Salawassa. It was one of the wealthiest cities of Pisidia when Alexander the Great took it in 333 BCE. Under Rome it was favoured by Emperor Hadrian, who named it the 'first city' of the province.

Ruin and rediscovery

After a major earthquake in the early 6th century the town recovered, but epidemics, water shortages, insecurity, a failing economy and another devastating earthquake around the mid-7th century drove people down to the valley. Large-scale excavations began in 1990 under Marc Waelkens of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. In 2007 they found a colossal statue of Hadrian, thought to have stood 4–5 m tall, and in 2008 the head of Faustina the Elder.

The Antonine Nymphaeum

The great fountain, the Antonine Nymphaeum, was restored between 1998 and 2010 and its water supply reconnected, so water flows again from the spring that fed it in antiquity.

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  Antonine Nymphaeum Flowing once more.
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  Upper agora The market square.
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  Excavated terraces Hellenistic to Byzantine buildings.