Pınara
Almost nothing is known about the ancient city of PINARA except that it may have been founded as an annexe of Xanthos. Later, however, Pınara – meaning “something round” in Lycian, presumably because of the shape of the original, upper acropolis – became one of the region’s larger cities, minting its own coins and earning three votes in the Federation.
Approaching the site, the cliff on which the city was first founded all but blocks out the horizon – indeed it’s worth the trip up just to see this towering mass, its east face covered in rectangular openings, either tombs or food-storage cubicles. These can now only be reached by experienced rock-climbers and it’s hard to imagine how they were originally cut.
Most of the ruins of Pınara are on the lower acropolis hill, east of the cliff, where the city was relocated after defence became less critical. The access track reaches a point almost level with the lower acropolis itself, but it’s densely overgrown with pines, and most of the buildings are unidentifiable.
Sidyma
Sited halfway up the ancient Mount Kragos – the modern coastal peak of Avlankara Tepesi – Sidyma is the remotest of the Xanthos valley’s ancient cities. Indeed, it’s scarcely in the valley at all. Set in a striking landscape astride the Lycian Way, it’s a rewarding, understated site that was only “rediscovered” by Europeans during the mid-nineteenth century, and has never been properly excavated.
Sidyma is one of many ancient sites in this part of the world to have been reoccupied at a much later date by local people, who have used the remains as a handy depository of ready-hewn stone blocks to build their own homes. Today’s settlement is known as Dudurga, and the village mosque not only occupies the site of the baths but reuses pillars from the agora’s stoa. Indeed the principal charm of Sidyma is how ancient masonry crops up everywhere: incorporated into house corners, used as livestock troughs, sprouting incongruously in courtyards next to satellite dishes. An exceedingly ruined castle, garrisoned in Byzantine times, sits on a hill to the north; scattered in the fields to the east, and requiring some scrambling over walls to reach, the necropolis holds various tomb types, though most have angular gabled roofs rather than the “Gothic” vaulted ones seen elsewhere.
Near the centre of the agricultural plain is a group of remarkable, contiguous tombs: one has ceiling panels carved with rosettes and human faces, while the adjacent tomb sports a relief of Eros on its lid and Medusas at the ends (a motif repeated elsewhere). Another spectacular cluster, including one tomb with two storeys, covers the low ridge beyond the fields.
The enormous, fairly intact, square structure in the middle of the necropolis is probably a Roman imperial heroön or temple-tomb. There’s a walled-up doorway on its north side.
The Letoön
The Letoön, shrine of the goddess Leto, was the official religious sanctuary, oracle and festival venue of the Lycian Federation, and extensive remaining ruins attest its importance. Christianized following the demise of the federation, it was only abandoned after the Arab raids of the seventh century. The Letoön was initially rediscovered by Charles Fellows in 1840, although French-conducted digs didn’t begin until 1962, since when it has been systematically uncovered and labelled.
Excavations of the Letoön have uncovered the remains of three temples and a nymphaeum, as well as various inscriptions. One stipulates conditions of entry to the sanctuary, including a strict dress code prohibiting rich jewellery, ostentatious clothing or elaborate hairstyles.
The Legend of the Letoön
In legend, the nymph Leto was loved by Zeus and thus jealously pursued by his wife Hera. Wandering in search of a place to give birth to her divine twins Apollo and Artemis, Leto approached a fountain to slake her thirst, only to be driven away by local herdsmen. Leto was then led by wolves to drink at the Xanthos River, and so changed the name of the country to Lycia, lykos being Greek for wolf. After giving birth, she returned to the spring – on the site of the existing Letoön, and forever after sacred to the goddess – to punish the insolent herdsmen by transforming them into frogs.
The name Leto may derive from the Lycian lada (woman), and the Anatolian mother-goddess, Cybele, may have been worshipped at this same site previously. Another similarity between the two goddesses is a link with incestuous mother-son unions, thought to have been common in Lycian society. The most famous of all the prophecies supposedly delivered at the Letoön predicted that Alexander the Great would destroy the Persian Empire.
Tlos
Among the most ancient and important Lycian cities, TLOS stands beside modern Asarkale village. Hittite records from the fourteenth century BC refer to it as “Dalawa in the Lukka lands”, and the local discovery of a bronze hatchet dating from the second millennium BC confirms the long heritage of the place. However, little else is known about its history.
The ruins themselves, while reasonably abundant, are often densely overgrown or even farmed, so precise identification of buildings is debatable. The setting is undeniably impressive, a high rocky promontory giving excellent views of the Xanthos valley. The acropolis bluff is dominated by an Ottoman Turkish fortress, home during the nineteenth century to the brigand and local chieftain, Kanlı (“Bloody”) Ali Ağa, who killed his own wayward daughter to uphold the family’s honour. Now used as a football pitch and pasture, it has obliterated all earlier remains on the summit. On its northeast side, the acropolis ends in almost sheer cliffs; the eastern slope bears traces of the Lycian city wall.
The site
Entry to the main site at Tlos is via the still intact northeastern city gate, next to the guard’s portakabin. Cobbled stairs climb to the main necropolis with its freestanding sarcophagi and complex of rock-cut house-tombs, one of which was discovered intact in 2005 yielding treasure kept at the Fethiye museum. If, however, you walk along a lower, level path from the gate, outside the city walls, you reach a second group of rock tombs. Dip below and right of these along a zigzagging trail to reach the temple-style Tomb of Bellerophon, at the hill’s northern base. Its facade was hewn with columns supporting a pediment, and three carved doors. A relief on the left wall of the porch represents the mythical hero Bellerophon (from whom one of Tlos’ ancient ruling families claimed descent), riding Pegasus, while facing them over the door a lion symbolically stands guard. It’s a fifteen-minute scramble down requiring good shoes, with a ladder ascent at the end, and both figures have been worn down by vandals and the elements.
Between the east slope of the acropolis hill and the curving onward road, a large, seasonally cultivated open space is thought to be the agora. Close to the base of the hill are traces of seats, part of a stadium which lay parallel to the marketplace. The opposite side of the agora is flanked by a long, arcaded building identified as the market hall.
Well beyond this, reached by a broad path off the eastbound road, lie the baths, where the sound of running water in nearby ditches lends credence to its identification. This atmospheric vantage point is perhaps the best bit of Tlos: three complete chambers, one with an apsidal projection known as Yedi Kapı (Seven Gates), after its seven intact windows, which provide a romantic view of the Xanthos valley. Sadly, it’s closed indefinitely for excavations that aim to uncover the fine marble floor and have also revealed a large, possibly Christian, cemetery.
Just north of the modern through-road, 34 rows of seats remain intact in a magnificent second-century AD theatre. The stage building holds several finely carved blocks – including one with an eagle beside a garlanded youth – and its northern section still stands to nearly full height, vying with the backdrop of mountains.