Sacred sites in Antalya

Andriake

Antalya, Turkey

Andriake was Myra's port and one of the busiest harbours on the Egypt-to-Rome grain route....

Antiphellos

Antalya, Turkey

Antiphellos was a Lycian harbor city whose ancient necropolis of rock-cut tombs and sarcophagi has never been separated from daily life....

Aperlai

Antalya, Turkey

Aperlai was a Lycian harbor city that produced Tyrian purple — the most valuable dye of antiquity, reserved for emperors and gods — and whose fortification walls now...

Ariassus

Antalya, Turkey

Ariassus is a ruined Pisidian and Roman city on a steep hillside above the Döşemealtı district of Antalya, founded in the Hellenistic period and flourishing through the...

Arykanda

Antalya, Turkey

Arykanda rises in five terraces against a near-vertical mountain cliff at roughly 1,000 meters in the Taurus range....

Aspendos

Antalya, Turkey

Aspendos is the site of the most intact Roman theatre on earth — its full stage building standing two stories high as it was constructed in the 2nd–3rd century CE, still...

Cyaneae

Antalya, Turkey

Cyaneae stands on a hill above the village of Yavu in western Lycia, its streets lined with more sarcophagi than any other known Lycian city....

Köprülü Canyon

Beşkonak, Manavgat, Antalya, Turkey

Köprülü Canyon cuts fourteen kilometers through Mediterranean limestone in Turkey's Antalya region, its walls rising as high as 100 meters above the Köprüçay river....

Limyra

Antalya, Turkey

Limyra was the capital of Lycia under King Pericles in the fourth century BCE — a city of more than 400 rock-cut tombs, a royal hero shrine, and a Temple of Zeus known...

Myra

Antalya, Turkey

Myra holds two sacred registers in simultaneous view: hundreds of Lycian rock-cut tombs covering the cliff face above the Roman theatre, and the Church of Saint Nicholas...

Necropolis of Xanthos

Antalya, Turkey

Xanthos was the political and spiritual capital of ancient Lycia, and its necropolis is the highest expression of a civilization that thought differently about death....

Olympos

Antalya, Turkey

Olympos is a Lycian city where a ruined valley opens onto a beach and a mountainside above burns with perpetual natural flame....

Patara

Antalya, Turkey

Patara was the most sacred city of ancient Lycia — the winter seat of Apollo, home to an oracle rivalling Delphi, birthplace of Saint Nicholas, and capital of one of...

Perge

Antalya, Turkey

Perge is one of the most complete Roman-period cities in Turkey — a colonnaded metropolis of theatres, baths, and triumphal gates set in the Pamphylian plain east of...

Phaselis

Antalya, Turkey

Phaselis was founded by Greek colonists from Lindos in the late 7th century BC, built around three natural harbors at the edge of the Lycian coast, and carried a legendary...

Rhodiapolis

Antalya, Turkey

Rhodiapolis stands on a hill above the Kumluca plain, largely unvisited, carrying one of the most extraordinary monuments in the ancient world: the mausoleum of Opramoas,...

Selge

Antalya, Turkey

Selge occupied a natural fortress at 1,250 metres in the Taurus, overlooking the gorges of what is now Köprülü Canyon National Park....

Side

Antalya, Turkey

Side was one of the great port cities of ancient Pamphylia — a dense peninsula-city of temples, theatres, and harbor gates, unique in having its own indigenous language...

Sillyon

Antalya, Turkey

Sillyon rises 200 metres above the Pamphylian coastal plain on a clifftop acropolis that was continuously inhabited from the Hittite period through the Ottoman era — a...

Simena

Antalya, Turkey

Simena, known today as Kaleköy, is a living village built across a Lycian acropolis above the sunken ruins of the Kekova coast....

Sura

Antalya, Turkey

On a marshy inlet near ancient Myra, the oracle of Sura operated for centuries without a philosopher or priestess in sight — only fish....

Temple of Apollo and Athena at Side

Part of Side

Antalya, Turkey

The temples of Apollo and Athena at Side occupy the westernmost tip of a Mediterranean peninsula — a harbor sacred area where two Olympian deities once watched over every...

Termessos

Antalya, Turkey

Termessos stands on a near-inaccessible summit of Güllük Dağı at almost 1,000 metres, ringed by cliffs that turned back Alexander the Great in 333 BCE....

Theimussa

Antalya, Turkey

At Üçağız, the ancient village of Theimussa, the line between archaeology and daily life has never fully closed....

Xanthos

Antalya, Turkey

Xanthos was the greatest city of Lycia, an ancient Anatolian civilization whose most distinctive expression was the pillar tomb: the dead raised on stone columns above the...