Aphrodisias is situated on Cape Tisan near the town of Yeşilovacık in the rural area of Silifke district which itself is a part of Mersin Province. The ancient name of this region was Cilicia Trachea ("Rough Cilicia"). So it is customary to call the ruins Aphrodisias of Cilicia to distinguish it from the better known Aphrodisias in Aydin Province. The ruins are at the east side of the cape facing Dana Island and Güvercinlik Island.
The foundation date of the ancient settlement is unknown. But it was a port of Ptolemaic Egypt in the fourth century BC. The settlement was incorporated into Roman Empire and in the marine book Ps.Skylax written in 101 AD, the settlement was named Cap Aphrodisias . During the early Middle Ages when the port was a part of Byzantine Empire, it was named Porto Cavaliere. Then it faded away. The location of the long forgotten ruins was discovered by Austrian Archaeologist Rudolf Heberdey in 1891.
There are ruins of a necropolis, a cistern, city walls and floor mosaics of a 4th-century church named St.Panteleon (The church was a temple prior to Christianity) . In 1987, Ludwig Budde from Germany published his book St.Pantaleon von Aphrodisias in Kılikien about the church. But most of the mosaics are not unearthed yet.
See:
- Paul Corby Finney eds., The Eerdmans Encyclopedia of Early Christian Art and Archaeology, Tom 1, sv. Aphrodisias (Cilicia) , Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing 2017