Turkey

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,...

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....

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...

Sarissa

Sivas, Turkey

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

Sayburç

Şanlıurfa, Turkey

Sayburç holds the oldest known narrative artwork in human history: a 3.7-metre stone bench relief depicting a man holding his phallus, flanked by leopards, followed by a...

Sefertepe

Şanlıurfa, Turkey

Sefertepe is the easternmost site of Turkey's Taş Tepeler Neolithic network, and among the most revelatory for understanding how ancient communities managed the transition...

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...

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....

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...

Sumaki Höyük

Batman, Turkey

Sumaki Höyük was a Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B and Early Pottery Neolithic settlement in the Lower Garzan Valley of Batman Province, occupied from approximately 7300 to...

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 Apollo, Didyma

Part of Didyma

Aydın, Turkey

At Didyma, the ancient world came for answers. Second only to Delphi as a prophetic sanctuary, the Didymaion was one of the largest temples ever built — its 122 Ionic...

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 Athena at Assos

Çanakkale, Turkey

Perched at 235 metres above the Aegean Sea on the acropolis of Assos, the Temple of Athena has occupied this promontory since approximately 540 BC — the sole surviving...

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...

Teos

İzmir, Turkey

Teos was an Ionian coastal city that served as the worldwide headquarters of the Dionysiac Artists guild — the professional association of actors, musicians, and poets who...

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....

Thyatira

Akhisar, Manisa, Turkey

Thyatira was the smallest of the seven cities addressed in the Book of Revelation, yet it received the longest of Christ's seven letters — commended for endurance,...

Tilmen Höyük

Gaziantep, Turkey

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

Tlos

Muğla, Turkey

Tlos has been continuously occupied since the Bronze Age and carries the fullest record of Lycian history of any city on the coast — from Hittite texts and the myth of...

Topada Rock Inscription

Nevşehir, Turkey

On a natural cliff plateau in the Cappadocian borderlands, King Wasusarma of Tabal carved the most historically detailed royal inscription from Iron Age central Anatolia:...

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...

Troy

Çanakkale, Turkey

Troy (Troia / Truva) is a multi-period Bronze Age to Roman city mound near Çanakkale, where nine distinct occupation layers span from around 3000 BC to AD 400....

Uzuncaburç

Mersin, Turkey

Uzuncaburç was once the divine capital of the Olba kingdom, where a priestly dynasty ruled in the name of Zeus Olbios....

Van Fortress

Van, Turkey

Van Fortress (Tushpa) was the sacred capital of the Urartian Kingdom from the 9th to 6th centuries BCE — a massive conglomerate rock rising from the shore of Lake Van...

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...

Yalburt Pool Monument

Isparta, Turkey

At 1,300 metres in the highland meadows of western Konya, a rectangular basin of inscribed limestone blocks marks the place where a Hittite king bound his military...

Yazılıkaya

Çorum, Turkey

Yazılıkaya is the largest known open-air Hittite sanctuary, located 2 km northeast of Hattusha in central Turkey....

Yesemek

Gaziantep, Turkey

Yesemek is an ancient quarry and sculpture workshop in southern Turkey where the Hittite Empire produced sacred guardian figures — sphinxes, lions, and mountain gods —...

Yeşilova Höyük

İzmir, Turkey

Yeşilova Höyük is a Neolithic and Chalcolithic tell mound in Bornova, İzmir, occupied from around 6500 to 4000 BC....

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...

Zeugma

Gaziantep, Turkey

Zeugma stood for two millennia where the Euphrates divided the Greek and Persian worlds....

Zincirli

Gaziantep, Turkey

Zincirli Höyük is the site of ancient Sam'al, a Neo-Hittite and Aramaean city-state in southeastern Turkey....

Zindan Cave, Yazılı Canyon

Aksu, Isparta, Turkey

Zindan Cave and Yazılı Canyon are two distinct locations roughly 35-40 km apart in Isparta Province, treated here as sequential stops on the same ancient road and modern...