Colossae

Colossae was an ancient city of Phrygia in southern Asia Minor, in what is now western Turkey. It stood in the Lycus Valley on the road through the valley, about 15 km southeast of Laodicea and at the foot of Mount Cadmus, the highest mountain of the Aegean Region of Turkey. The city is first named by Herodotus, who called it a great city of Phrygia, and Xenophon later described it as populous, wealthy and of considerable size. Its wool, and a colour called colossinus that took its name from the city, gave it much of its early wealth, and its healing springs made it known as a place of therapeutic water. By the first century it had shrunk greatly, and an earthquake in the 60s AD damaged it. Colossae is best known today because the New Testament Epistle to the Colossians is addressed to its Christian community. Under the Byzantines the neighbouring settlement of Chonae took over its fame, with a church of the Archangel Michael, and the see was placed under Laodicea. Excavations at the buried mound began only in 2021.