Turkey Guide
The Turquoise Coast
Patara
At the far southern edge of Gelemiş village, a lockable gate and ticket booth controls vehicle access to both beach and archeological site (daily: May– Oct 8.30am–7.30pm; Nov– April 8.30am–5pm; 2YTL) some distance beyond. Although the ruins are unfenced, you are technically not allowed in on foot outside the official opening times.
Much of the site has never been fully excavated, and by and large it presents a spectacle of numerous unidentified and badly overgrown walls in polygonal masonry. Few clear paths link individual ruins, which often means repeated, irritating backtracking to the main road. There are also no facilities or shade – bring water, stout shoes and a head covering during summer.
Two kilometres from the village, the entrance to the city is marked by a triple-arched, first-century AD Roman gateway, almost completely intact. To the west of the gate rises a little hill where a head of Apollo was discovered, prompting speculation that this was the site of the temple of Apollo. Just outside the gate, a necropolis is currently being excavated every summer by a Turkish team led by Fahri İşik from Akdeniz University in Antalya.
South of the hill sits a baths complex, similar to the one at Tlos, with arches and five rectangular apsidal windows, and the foundations of either a basilica or an extension of the baths, to which an exotic touch is lent by a shady palm grove sprouting up from the flooring and almost totally obscuring it. To the west of these, tacked onto the longest surviving extent of the city walls – and difficult to reach – is an attractive second-century temple. While too small and simple to be identified as the city's famous Apollo shrine, it has a richly decorated seven-metre-high door-frame – its lintel long on the point of collapse – leading into a single chamber. Further south, reached by a different track from the main road, are more baths, built by the emperor Vespasian (69–79 AD), which impress mainly by their squat bulk. Just west of these is a large paved area, either the main agora or a processional street, with its north end partly submerged by the high local water-table, and a growing number of stubby columns being re-erected by the excavators.
The theatre sits southwest of these baths, under the brow of the acropolis hill and easiest reached by yet another track heading off the main road, a few paces before the beach car park. The cavea has been cleaned of sand to reveal eighteen rows of seats up to the diazoma (dividing walkway) and a dozen or so more beyond. The partly intact stage building is slowly being pieced together; on its exterior you can read a Greek inscription ascribing the erection of the stage to a woman, Vilia Prokla, and her father, both citizens of Patara. The funding for it was approved by the local council, which is thought to have been convened in the recently exposed boueuterion (locked but views through the gate) between the theatre and the agora, with its horseshoe array of seating.
South of the theatre a reasonable path climbs uphill to the city's acropolis. At the top lurks an unusual rectangular pit, some ten metres across, with a pillar (for measuring water level) rearing out of the bottom and badly damaged stairs down its side. Since it doesn't overlook the old harbour, the pit was almost certainly a cistern, and not the lighthouse as originally supposed; that is identified as the square, arched tower, its top collapsed, on the west side of the hill, which still has a fine view over the sea, beach and brackish swamp that was once the harbour. The latter silted up gradually in the Middle Ages and was subsequently abandoned, separated today from the beach by 300-metre-wide dunes stabilized by introduced mimosa and fencing. On the far side of the stagnant port, across the dunes, are the bulky remains of Hadrian's granary.