Multi-tradition sacred sites in Turkey

Sardis

Manisa, Turkey

Sardis was the capital of the Lydian Empire, the city where coinage was invented, and a site where Artemis, Cybele, Yahweh, and Christ each in turn held sacred space....

Tripolis on the Maeander

Denizli, Turkey

Tripolis on the Maeander stood at the precise meeting point of three ancient regions — Lydia, Phrygia, and Caria — a location that ancient geography understood as...

Karadağ Monuments

Karaman, Turkey

Karadağ — the 'Black Mountain' — is an extinct volcanic massif in southern Konya that has drawn sacred attention for at least three thousand years....

Harran

Şanlıurfa, Turkey

Harran is one of the oldest continuously inhabited sacred cities on earth — the foremost temple of the Mesopotamian moon god Sin for four millennia, the place where...

Ahlat Urartian remains

Bitlis, Turkey

Ahlat on the northwestern shore of Lake Van is one of the least-visited and most extraordinary sacred landscapes in Turkey....

Pergamon

İzmir, Turkey

Pergamon rises 330 metres above the Bakırçay plain on a natural acropolis that the Attalid kings transformed into one of the ancient world's densest concentrations of...

Andriake

Antalya, Turkey

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

Adada

Isparta, Turkey

Adada is among the best-preserved and least-visited ancient cities of inland Turkey, its three temple facades still standing against the Taurus foothills after nearly two...

Castabala

Osmaniye, Turkey

Castabala was named Hieropolis — 'holy city' — because of the goddess who dwelt within it....

Antioch of Pisidia

Isparta, Turkey

At over a thousand meters on the Anatolian plateau, Antioch of Pisidia preserves the ruins of the Roman colonial city where Paul delivered one of his most consequential...

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...

Heraclea by Latmus

Muğla, Turkey

Heraclea by Latmus stands on the shore of Lake Bafa — a lake that was once an Aegean inlet — beneath the granite pinnacles of Beşparmak Mountain....

Foça Castle

İzmir, Turkey

Foça Castle occupies the promontory at the entrance to Foça Bay where the ancient Phocaeans built the Temple of Athena — the oldest known Ionian temple — on an even older...

Hierapolis-Pamukkale

Denizli, Turkey

Hierapolis-Pamukkale is a UNESCO World Heritage Site where three thousand years of sacred use converge: white calcium terraces formed by thermal springs, the ruins of a...

Ayazini

Afyonkarahisar, Turkey

In a volcanic tuff cliff in the Phrygian Valley, the Phrygians cut their dead into the rock, the Romans elaborated their chambers with classical facades, and Byzantine...

Cennet and Cehennem

Mersin, Turkey

Cennet and Cehennem are paired karst sinkholes on the Cilician coast: one lush and accessible, leading down 300 steps to a Byzantine cave chapel; one dark, sheer-walled,...

Zerzevan Castle

Diyarbakır, Turkey

Zerzevan Castle, on Turkey's UNESCO Tentative List, holds one of the world's best-preserved Mithraea — a rock-cut underground chamber where Roman frontier soldiers enacted...

Sardis Temple of Artemis

Part of Sardis

Manisa, Turkey

Two surviving Ionic columns rising against the Lydian hills are what remains of the fourth largest temple in the ancient world — a structure that replaced a Lydian...

Çandarlı Castle

İzmir, Turkey

Çandarlı Castle stands on the Aegean waterfront at the tip of a small promontory north of İzmir — a 14th-century Genoese fortification rebuilt by the Ottoman Grand Vizier...

Harput Castle

Elazığ, Turkey

Harput Castle has drawn human devotion to this mountain above the eastern Anatolian plain for approximately four millennia — from Urartian fortress culture through...

Kanlıdivane

Mersin, Turkey

At Kanlıdivane, an enormous karst sinkhole drops seventy metres into the Cilician limestone, and everything built here — a Hellenistic tower, four Byzantine basilicas, 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....

Anazarbus

Adana, Turkey

Anazarbus rises from the Cilician plain on a rocky mesa — a city that has been fortress, oracle site, imperial metropolis, and Armenian capital in succession....

Alexandria Troas

Çanakkale, Turkey

Alexandria Troas was the largest and most strategically important port on the northwest Anatolian coast — a city of four hundred thousand founded at the crossroads of...

Red Basilica

İzmir, Turkey

The Red Basilica at Pergamon is one of the ancient world's most layered sacred spaces....