The Triconch House is a large, late antique peristyle house in
Aphrodisias in southwestern Asia Minor. Previously known as the Bishop's
Palace, it is one of the best preserved late antique houses in the Greek
East and one of several in the Roman empire with a triple-apsed, or
triconch, dining room. Its decorative program included large-scale
figural wall paintings, a display of sculpture, and polychrome mosaic
floors. The late antique house represents, however, only one phase in a
much longer continuum of occupation of its site, which was roughly the
size of a city block and located at the heart of the monumental urban
center. This study is concerned both with the history and development of
the urban location of the Triconch House and with the details of the
late antique building. It traces the development of a plot of land
measuring roughly 50m by 50 m over the course of some 1200 years, from
at least the first century BC through the twelfth century AD. This study
examines the house within its immediate surroundings in the northern
part of the city center and considers these within the larger context of
the urban development of Aphrodisias. At every stage of its history, the
site of the Triconch House was intimately linked with the structures and
institutions that surrounded it, and its evolution follows the major
phases of the history of Aphrodisias. Structures were first built there
during the city's emergence as a planned town in the late Hellenistic
period and they continued to be used throughout the imperial period. In
late antiquity, when the city was a provincial capital, those structures
were transformed into a large and well-appointed townhouse in the center
of town. Finally, beginning sometime after the mid-seventh century AD,
the Triconch House became a bishop's residence and remained a component
of a larger ecclesiastical complex through the middle Byzantine period,
when Aphrodisias was a metropolitan see and pilgrimage site. This study
will be of interest to archaeologists and other scholars interested in
domestic architecture and urbanism in the Roman provinces, especially in
late antiquity and the post-antique/Byzantine phases of Greco-Roman
cities. It may also appeal to archaeologists using legacy data and
Bauforschung/building archaeology approaches to ancient structures.
