Due to the monumental gate and architectural peculiarities at the front, the building was identified as a temple. The inscription on the remains of a statue in front of the building points to a year of construction around 175 BC. This inscription also indicates that the statue was erected in honour of Emperor Mark Aurel. The only well-preserved structure is the aforementioned gate, 4.88 m high, which is decorated on the sides of the lintel with acanthus ornaments and an unfinished row of a pearl motif. Remarkable is the unplastered masonry found in several Lycian towns.

Marc Aurel (* 26 April 121 in Rome; † 17 March 180 in Vindobona or possibly Sirmium), also Mark Aurel or Marcus Aurelius, was Roman emperor from 161 to 180. As successor of his adoptive father Antoninus Pius he called himself Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus. With his reign, a phase of inner and outer stability and prosperity for the Roman Empire, the era of the so-called adoptive emperors, ended in many respects. Marc Aurel was the last of them, for in his son Commodus a physical heir of the ruler function was ready.

Mark Aurel set domestic political accents in legislation and jurisprudence in facilitating the lot of the disadvantaged of Roman society at that time, especially slaves and women.
He had to face extraordinary challenges in the face of a catastrophic flooding of the Tiber, the confrontation with the Antoninian plague and spontaneous persecutions of Christians within the Roman Empire. At the borders of the Empire, after a long period of peace, he again had to take action on several fronts against invading enemies. In particular, the east of the empire was threatened by the Parthians, over whom Marc Aurelius' fellow emperor Lucius Verus triumphed, and the Danube region by various Germanic tribes. Marc Aurel spent the last decade of his life mainly in the field camp. Here he wrote the self-reflections which present him to posterity as philosopher emperor and which are sometimes counted as world literature.