Preservation of Some Ancient Cities in Aegean Region of Turkey with an Emphasis on Hierapolis, Laodikeia, Aphrodisias and Lagina Halil Kumsar 1 , Ömer Aydan 2 , Celal Şimşek 3 , Francisco D’Andrıa 4 , Bilal Söğüt 3 , Mehmet Meder 5 , Nesrin Karabay 6 1 Pamukkale University, Dept. Of Geological Engineering. Denizli, Turkey 2 Tokai Univ. Dept. Of Marine Civil Eng. Shizuoka, Japan 3 Pamukkale University, Dept. Of Archeology. Denizli, Turke 4 Università degli Studi di Lecce,Italy, 5 Pamukkale University, Dept. Of Sociology, Denizli, Turkey 6 Museum Directorate of Denizli, Turkey 1. INTRODUCTION Turkey is a unique country in accommodating various civilizations in its long history. As a result there are many antique cities and settlements all over Turkey. Most of the antique cities were established by Hatties, Hittites, Phrygians, Carians long before their colonization by Romans and old Greeks although they could have been grown in size and importance during the Roman or Hellenic periods. Antique cities were mainly built with natural stones. These are; marble, travertine, basalt, andesite, schist, limestone. Geology of the area played a key role for selecting type of naturel stone for constructing antique cities and sculpturing the monuments and statues. Most of the antique cities were established along active the fault zones where there are thermal water spring discharges. Most of these cities were destroyed by strong earthquakes occurred in ancient times. For examples Hierapolis, Tripolis, Laodikeia, Colossea in Denizli, Aphrodisias and Magnesia in Aydın, Ephesus in İzmir, Lagina in Muğla cities (Figure 1). In this paper, Hierapolis, , Laodikeia, Aphrodisias and Lagina antique cities are studied. Figure1. Antique regions in western part of Anatolia