File:Sagalassos in 2012 2679.jpg

English: As not everyone speaks Dutch here is a translation:

The building

Under Marcus Aurelius (AD 161-180), a nymphaeum or show fountain was built against an Augustan terrace wall along the northern edge of the Upper Agora. The water itself is used as an architectural element. It falls like a waterfall into a basin in which the rich columnar architecture is reflected. The fountain is of the tabernacle type, with chapels, called tabernacles or aediculae, alternating with arched niches in the rear wall. Each tabernacle rests on a podium and counts one to two pairs of Corinthian columns corresponding to half-pilasters on the back wall. Thery then had a carrying frame and a roof. Such facades of columns arose in the East under Augustus. Their great popularity in the Imperial period is due on the one hand to the fact that their architecture offered the opportunity to glorify the city or builder by means of images, and on the other to their countless application possibilities. They may have been used first as inner walls of theater scenes, then as gates and finally as show fountains. Usually they consisted of two, possibly three, floors

In Sagalassos, two longer side tabernacles (with 4 columns and 2 semi-pilasters) flank the basin of the fountain. The four tabernacles in between are smaller (with 2 columns and 2 half-pilasters). The tabernacles have always served as an architectural setting for statues, the shallow niches were originally purely decorative. All columns consist of differently colored stones of mainly regional origin. The wall plates against the rear wall of the tabernacles, including their semi-pilasters, also have two types of colored stone.These colored stones and the grey-brown patina of the Augusteian terrace wall visible in the niches of the rear wall contrast with the white limestone of podiums and the balustrade of the basin. Even more striking is the clearite limestone used for the bases, capitals, frames and pediments of the tabernacles, as well as for the pilasters and archivolts surrounding the niches in the rear wall.

The support frames continue over the tabernacles and the rear wall. They consist of smooth architraves, rich tendril friezes and cornices with palmettes. Each 'tabernacle' has a roof that is divided inside into cassettes decorated with plant motifs, theatrical masks and other heads. These roofs have a pediment at the front. Above the corner tabernacles, these are decorated with mutually reflecting volutes. The smaller tabernacles bear triangular or semicircular pediments, all with a Medusa head. In the middle of the back wall a large shell covers the semicircular niche from which the water fell below. This water flowed over the balustrade of the full basin into a trench in the pavement. This led it to a settling basin, after which it passed under the agora in the direction of the lower city.