Temple of Hadrian

This small temple on Curetes Street was dedicated to the emperor Hadrian around the year 138, as the inscription on the architrave says. The facade is arranged in an unusual way: four columns carry not a continuous architrave but a Syrian arch thrown across the middle span, and a bust of Tyche, the goddess of fortune, is set in its keystone. Above the entrance to the cella a semicircular relief is carved with the figure of Medusa amid plant ornament, placed there to drive away evil. The side panels show scenes of the founding of Ephesus: Heracles, the Amazons, Athena and Artemis, while a fourth slab adds figures of the imperial family. These reliefs are copies, the originals are kept in the Ephesus Museum in Selcuk. The building stood on a podium and faced the road that ran down from the upper agora to the library, with public baths opposite it. The structure was badly damaged by earthquakes, and its present appearance dates from a restoration in the middle of the 20th century. The temple is modest in size, but it is exactly this building that has become one of the most recognisable images of Ephesus.

On the map