Turkey

Knidos

Muğla, Turkey

Knidos stands at the extreme western point of the Datça Peninsula, where the Aegean gives way to the Mediterranean....

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....

Körtik Tepe

Diyarbakır, Turkey

Körtik Tepe is among the oldest known permanently settled communities on Earth, occupied for fifteen centuries during the Younger Dryas cold period at the confluence of...

Köşk Höyük

Niğde, Turkey

Beneath the volcanic profile of Mount Hasan on the Bor Plateau of Central Anatolia, Köşk Höyük preserves a rare sequence of Neolithic and Chalcolithic life spanning 1,500...

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...

Kümbet

Eskişehir, Turkey

Kümbet village in Eskişehir province occupies the site of ancient Meros, a Phrygian city from the Iron Age....

Labraunda

Muğla, Turkey

Labraunda is a mountain sanctuary in ancient Caria dedicated to Zeus Labraundos — a uniquely Carian form of Zeus bearing the double-headed axe (labrys)....

Laodicea on the Lycus

Denizli, Denizli, Turkey

Laodicea on the Lycus was a wealthy Hellenistic and Roman city in Turkey's Lycus Valley, refounded around 261-253 BC by the Seleucid king Antiochus II....

Letoon

Muğla, Turkey

Letoon was the sacred center of the Lycian League — not a city but a federal sanctuary where an entire civilization declared its political decisions before the gods....

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...

Magnesia on the Maeander

Aydın, Turkey

Magnesia on the Maeander was the city of Artemis Leucophryene, the white-browed goddess who appeared to her people in a theophany and prompted one of the most remarkable...

Maltaş

Afyonkarahisar, Turkey

For nearly a century, Maltaş was classified as a shaft monument of uncertain function....

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

Aydın, Turkey

Miletus was once the most powerful city in the Greek world—birthplace of the Milesian philosophers who first sought rational explanations for the cosmos, and the starting...

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...

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...

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....

Nemrut Dagi

Kâhta, Adıyaman, Turkey

Nemrut Dağ is the mountaintop sanctuary of Antiochus I Theos of Commagene, who constructed colossal limestone statues of himself seated among Greek and Persian gods on a...

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....

Nysa

Aydın, Turkey

Nysa on the Maeander was a Hellenistic city of unusual distinction — the mythological birthplace valley of Dionysus, a renowned center of philosophical scholarship, and...

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...

Old Smyrna

İzmir, Turkey

Within a residential neighbourhood of modern İzmir, the Tepekule mound rises ten metres above the surrounding streets — a compressed record of human settlement from the...

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....

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...

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....

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...

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....

Pessinus

Eskişehir, Turkey

Pessinus was the ancient world's most important sanctuary of Cybele, the Phrygian Great Mother....

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...

Philadelphia (Asia Minor)

Alaşehir, Manisa, Turkey

Ancient Philadelphia survives only in fragments — three worn pillars of a Byzantine basilica, a stretch of city wall, an unexcavated theater — scattered through the...

Pinara

Muğla, Turkey

Pinara is one of the least-visited major Lycian cities, set on the flanks of Mount Babadağ with hundreds of rock-cut tombs honeycombed into sheer cliffs above the ruins....

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...

Priene

Aydın, Turkey

Priene is the most completely preserved Hellenistic city on Earth — a street grid carved into the hillside below Mount Mycale, still legible after two thousand years of...

Red Basilica

İzmir, Turkey

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

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,...