Ancient sacred sites in Turkey

Kibyra

Burdur, Turkey

At the junction of four ancient Anatolian worlds — Lycia, Caria, Pisidia, and Phrygia — Kibyra built one of the most complete stadiums in the ancient world, carved...

Kızıldağ Monuments

Karaman, Turkey

Rising from the flat Konya plain as a volcanic cone of red rock, Kızıldağ was the royal mountain sanctuary of King Hartapu — an Iron Age Luwian ruler who carved his...

Kültepe-Kanesh

Kayseri, Turkey

Kültepe-Kanesh is where writing came to Anatolia. Beneath an unassuming mound northeast of Kayseri lie 23,500 cuneiform tablets—the oldest written documents from this part...

Liman Tepe

İzmir, Turkey

Liman Tepe is a prehistoric coastal tell on the Urla peninsula of western Turkey, settled continuously from the Neolithic through the Bronze Age....

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...

Mausoleum at Halicarnassus

Muğla, Turkey

The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World — a royal tomb so extraordinary that it gave its name to every grand funerary monument...

Meher Kapısı

Van, Turkey

Meher Kapısı is a monumental niche hewn into the vertical face of Zımzım Mountain, near Van in eastern Turkey....

Metropolis

İzmir, Turkey

Metropolis in Ionia carries an extraordinary depth of sacred history: Neolithic fertility cult, Bronze Age Hittite sacred center called Puranda, and then — uniquely among...

Midas Tumulus

Eskişehir, Turkey

Despite the name, Midas Monument is not a burial place. It is the largest and most elaborate open-air sanctuary ever carved for the Phrygian Mother Goddess — a...

Miletus Stoa

Part of Miletus

Aydın, Turkey

The stoas of Miletus — particularly the colonnaded precincts of the Apollo Delphinios sanctuary and the great Lion Harbour stoa — were the ceremonial architecture through...

Mount Harşena and the Rock-Tombs of the Pontic Kings

Amasya, Turkey

On the sheer limestone face of Mount Harşena above the ancient city of Amasya, the rock-cut tombs of the Pontic kings have overlooked the Yeşilırmak river gorge for over...

Mount Sipylus and the Manisa relief

Manisa, Turkey

Mount Sipylus in western Anatolia has been a sacred mountain for over three thousand years — carrying a Hittite cliff carving later read as the oldest image of Cybele, the...

Myrina

İzmir, Turkey

Myrina was a prosperous Aeolian harbor city whose craftspeople produced thousands of terracotta figurines — deities, children's toys, theatrical figures — that served...

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....

Notion

İzmir, Turkey

Notion was the harbour city of Colophon, positioned on the Gulf of Kuşadası in western Turkey as the coastal gateway to the oracle of Apollo at Claros....

Oinoanda

Muğla, Turkey

Oinoanda preserves the largest known philosophical inscription of the ancient world — a monument commissioned by the elderly Epicurean Diogenes of Oenoanda in the 2nd...

Olba

Mersin, Turkey

Thirty-two kilometres into the Taurus Mountains above Silifke, the ancient sanctuary city of Olba preserves the oldest peristyle Corinthian temple in Asia Minor — rebuilt...

Oluz Höyük

Amasya, Turkey

Oluz Höyük is a multi-layered archaeological mound near Amasya that has yielded the earliest known Zoroastrian fire temple in Anatolia and a remarkable Phrygian sanctuary...

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....

Oylum Höyük

Kilis, Turkey

Oylum Höyük rises from the plains of Kilis — a tell carrying six millennia of continuous occupation, from Chalcolithic settlers through Hittite administrators to Byzantine...

Panionium

Aydın, Turkey

On a hillside above the Aegean, facing Samos across a narrow strait, the Panionium served for centuries as the spiritual and political heart of the Ionian world....

Parion

Çanakkale, Turkey

Parion stood at one of antiquity's most charged geographic and spiritual thresholds — the Propontis crossing between Europe and Asia....

Pedasa

Muğla, Turkey

Pedasa occupies a hilltop above the Bodrum peninsula, its Lelegian walls and 6th-century Athena temple surviving among pine and wild herb....

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...

Perrhe

Adıyaman, Turkey

Perrhe was one of the four principal cities of the Kingdom of Commagene — a realm that fused Hellenistic, Persian, and Anatolian religion into something entirely its own....

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...

Ploutonion at Hierapolis

Denizli, Turkey

The Ploutonion at Hierapolis is a sanctuary built over a CO2 vent on the Pamukkale fault, where the ancient world's most convincing proof of Hades's existence was...

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,...

Sagalassos

Burdur, Turkey

Set at 1,450–1,700 metres in the Taurus Mountains, Sagalassos rose from a Hittite-era predecessor to become Rome's most lavishly honoured city in Pisidia....

Samuha

Sivas, Turkey

Samuha was called the 'religious foyer of the Hittite Empire' — the supreme cult center of Šauška, goddess of love and war. A future Hittite king served as her priest here....

Šapinuwa

Çorum, Turkey

Šapinuwa was a royal Hittite city that may have briefly displaced the capital Hattusa itself, and its archive of 3,000-plus tablets—written in Hittite, Hurrian, Akkadian,...

Sarissa

Sivas, Turkey

Sarissa was a royal cult city of the Hittite Empire, dedicated to the supreme Weather God....

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...

Sidyma

Muğla, Turkey

Sidyma is one of the most evocative unexcavated Lycian cities: approximately 100 tomb monuments — pillar tombs, house tombs, sarcophagi on podia — scattered through the...

Soğmatar

Şanlıurfa, Turkey

In the Tektek Mountains southeast of Şanlıurfa, Soğmatar preserves the physical remains of a Sabian sacred landscape — seven satellite shrines surrounding a central hill...

Stratonikeia

Muğla, Turkey

Stratonikeia was the unique Carian city linked by sacred procession roads to two major divine sanctuaries: the Temple of Hecate at Lagina and the Temple of Zeus...

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....

Tapikka

Tokat, Turkey

Tapikka was the Hittite Empire's northernmost garrison city, positioned on the frontier with the Kaska people....

Taşçı Reliefs

Kayseri, Turkey

Carved into cliff faces deep within a narrow gorge at the confluence of two rivers, the Taşçı Reliefs are among the most remote sacred monuments of the Hittite Empire....

Tell Tayinat

Hatay, Turkey

Tell Tayinat was the royal capital Kunulua of the Neo-Hittite Kingdom of Patina — a city of carved lion-flanked temples whose tripartite sacred architecture mirrors, in...

Telmessos Rock Tombs

Muğla, Turkey

The Telmessos rock tombs are Lycian funerary architecture at its most public: carved directly into a limestone cliff above the harbor of modern Fethiye, visible from...

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...

Temple of Artemis

İzmir, Turkey

For over a millennium, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus was the holiest sanctuary in the ancient Mediterranean world — and the largest building the Greeks ever constructed....

Temple of Hecate at Lagina

Muğla, Turkey

Lagina holds the largest and most important sanctuary of Hecate ever built — a site where she was not a supplementary figure in someone else's pantheon but the principal...

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....

Tilmen Höyük

Gaziantep, Turkey

Tilmen Höyük is a Bronze Age tell mound near Islahiye in southeastern Turkey, set within a Ramsar-protected wetland valley....