Tlos and Kayakoy

The Lycian tombs below the Ottoman fortress at Tlos

 

While we were in Gocek we decided to hire a car to explore the area. Several local Brits had recommended the site of Tlos, which sits in the foothills of the Akdaglar mountains, overlooking the beautiful Xanthos valley, so that was our starting point. Then we saw that the Saklikent gorge was nearby, so we added that to our list, and finally the abandoned village of Kayakoy near Fethiye, which  was the inspiration for Louis de Bernieres' novel, Birds Without Wings.

You can see Tlos long before you get there, as the acropolis stands out on a high, rocky bluff with a honeycomb of impressive Lycian rock tombs below it.  This started as one of the oldest and most important cities in Lycia, and continued to be occupied right through until the 19^th century when a Turkish chieftan lived in the fortress that had been built by the Ottomans over the acropolis.

The Roman amphitheatre at Tlos  is still being excavated

We climbed up to the acropolis to look at the rock tombs and admire  the view of the towering mountains on one side and the wonderfully green Xanthos valley on the other. Down below we walked through the remains of the agora, baths and a roman amphitheatre.  The site has not been excavated until recently, and in 2011 it hit the headlines when several impressive sculptures of Roman emperors were uncovered near the theatre. Standing beside the slightly overgrown remains we imagined what it must have been like to have found the statues, and added a visit to Fethiye museum, where they are now exhibited, to our ‘to see’ list.

Next stop was the Saklikent gorge. It was nearing lunchtime, and as we drove through the small country roads to get to the gorge the owners of roadside restaurants tried to flag us down by running into the road waving and shouting at us. When we eventually arrived at the gorge we were disappointed to find that you could only see a small section of it unless you waded upriver through the rapids which were quite deep as there had been heavy rain the day before. I had an injured ankle and wading through rapids was out of the question, so we turned back and focused on lunch. This, at least, was a success, we found a lovely restaurant with traditional seating built out on wooden decking over a trout stream and had a tasty meal of fresh local trout.

Relaxing in the traditional restaurant in Saklikent

After lunch we drove back down towards the coast to visit the abandoned town of Kayakoy near Fethiye. Until the turn of the 20 century the town (like Fethiye and many others in the area) was mainly populated with Greeks.  Then, after the Turkish War of Independence, it was agreed that an exchange of populations should take place and the Greeks from Kayakoy were sent to Rhodes and then onto Athens. In fact, once I started to research the history, I discovered that many of the Greeks had been forced to leave the town long before this, as the fight for independence led to atrocities on both sides. A few Turkish people stayed on in the town, but they too left when it was devastated by an earthquake in 1957.



The abandoned town of Kayakoy



Today the site is an official historic monument, and over 2,000 stone houses stand abandoned on the two hillsides. It looks and feels like a huge cemetery, and as we walked through the narrow streets between the empty, roofless buildings we agreed there was an unsettling presence – it was almost as if you could feel the ghosts of the long departed residents.

Statue of Emperor Hadrian from Tlos

The next day we caught the bus for a hair-raising ride on the mountain road around the coast from Gocek to Fethiye, where we had lunch by the harbour then went in search of the museum. We eventually found it in a back street on the outskirts of the town, tucked between two schools.  It was worth the visit as it has an interesting collection of finds from Tlos and other nearby sites. We also got to see the five, impressive statues that had been unearthed at Tlos of the Roman emperors Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, and Antoninus Pius, plus his daughter Faustina Minor and the Goddess Isis.

 

Umbrellas shading one of the pedestrian walkways in Fethiye