Materiali lapidei pregiati per l'architettura di Hierapolis di Frigia: la trasformazione dell'immagine della città in età imperiale e lo sfruttamento delle risorse naturali del territorio

The paper focuses on the role that natural resources of the territory (i.e. marble, white and coloured alabaster, and polychromatic breccia quarries) played in the formation of the image that the municipal authorities gave to Hierapolis of Phrygia in the first three centuries of the Roman imperial age. In fact, in the main monumental phases and urban transformations that characterized the city (i) in the Augustan and Julio-Claudian age, (ii) in the late Tiberian and Flavian era, (iii) in the Hadrian and Antonine periods, (iv) and finally in the Severan age, a fundamental role was played by stone valuable materials from the quarries of the territory of Hierapolis. This included a large quarrying district, which made Hierapolis fully self-sufficient and also allowed the export of valuable materials (alabaster listato or fiorito). At Hierapolis, public buildings dating to the end of the 1st cent. BC and the 3rd cent. AD are built entirely in marble or have monumental marble facades facing the travertine structures; they are characterized by the integrated use of local white and coloured marbles, with the addition, in a few cases and for special architectural and sculptural elements, especially in the Severan age, of the import of materials from the quarrying districts of Denizli-Laodikeia, Aphrodisias and especially Dokimeion; from the last quarries came both white marble and pavonazzetto.