BC 700 – AD 600
Letoon
the federal sanctuary of Lycia
A sanctuary of three temples dedicated to Leto, Apollo and Artemis — the religious heart of the League. Its trilingual inscription (Lycian, Greek, Aramaic) was the key that unlocked the Lycian language.
- Lycian League votes
- Not a member / unknown
- Location
- 36.3318° N, 29.2892° E
- Today
- Kumluova · Seydikemer, Muğla
Monuments and buildings
The temple of Leto
The largest in the sanctuary · 2nd century BC (over an older building)
The westernmost and largest of the three temples: 30 × 16 metres, peripteral, of the Ionic order. At the back of the cella there is a hollow cut directly into the living rock — the holiness beneath the temple is older than the marble above it. The foundations now lie permanently under water, with the column drums standing in it. This is not decay: the site itself says the same thing as the story of Leto finding water here.
The temple of Apollo
One of the oldest mosaics in Anatolia · 2nd century BC
The eastern temple, Doric, and almost exactly the size of Leto’s. Its real fame comes from the floor: the mosaic covering the cella shows a rosette in the centre, with a lyre on one side and a bow and quiver on the other — the lyre for Apollo, the bow for Artemis. Dated to the 2nd century BC, it is among the earliest mosaics known in Anatolia; the twins stand side by side inside the temple too.
The temple of Artemis
A temple built around a rock · 4th–3rd century BC
The smallest and strangest of the three: 18 × 9 metres, with no surrounding colonnade, just a naos. Inside stands a piece of **living rock**, never moved — the temple was built around it. This shows that the oldest holiness on the site belonged not to a building but to a piece of ground: the rock came first, the temple afterwards.
The Sacred Way and the trilingual stele
The stone that unlocked Lycian · 358 BC (the inscription)
The paved way running from the propylon to the temples, lined on both sides with votive bases. The stele found in this area in 1973 is the single most important find in Lycian archaeology: the same text written in **Lycian, Greek and Aramaic**. It records the founding of a cult in the time of the satrap Pixodarus. Because it is trilingual, Lycian could begin to be read — this stone opened the door to a language.
The monumental fountain
A pool with a semicircular niche · Roman, AD 2nd century
A large semicircular exedra looking onto a rectangular pool, southwest of the sanctuary. Statues stood in its niches. The building is dated to the reign of Hadrian, and shows once again how central water is to this site. Today both the pool and the inside of the exedra are full of water — shared with turtles and frogs.
The theatre
An entrance with sixteen masks · 2nd century BC
A Hellenistic theatre north of the sanctuary, facing south towards the temples. Its cavea of nearly thirty rows survives almost intact. Its most striking feature is the outer wall of the vaulted northern entrance: **sixteen theatre masks in relief** are ranged across it — the faces of comedy and tragedy. The plays performed here belonged to the festivals not of one city but of all Lycia.
The north portico
A long stoa closing the site to the north · Hellenistic period
A porticoed building some seventy metres long, facing south. Behind it runs a row of rooms; these carried the crowds who came for the festivals, the offerings, and the running of the site. It draws the northern boundary of the sanctuary: temples to its south, the theatre to its north.
The propylon and west portico
The entrance to the sanctuary · Hellenistic period
The site was entered from the west, from the Xanthos road. The propylon is the monumental gate; the long west portico behind it links the visitor to the Sacred Way. In a sanctuary a gate is no ordinary building: it is the boundary between outside and inside, and past it the walk counts as procession.
The early Byzantine church
A church built from the stone of the temples · AD 5th–6th century
A three-aisled basilica raised southeast of the temples. Some of its columns and blocks were taken straight from the old temples; traces of mosaic survive in its floor. It is the clearest evidence that the sanctuary changed hands — the same place, a new god. With the building of the church, the stones of the temples begin to be pulled down.
The terraces
Retaining steps holding the hillside · Hellenistic and Roman periods
Retaining walls east of the sanctuary, holding the foot of the hill in a series of steps. They serve both to win level ground and to hold back the water and soil coming down the slope. They are the least showy and the most necessary structures on the site: without them the level ground the temples stand on would be buried under the hillside.
This city in history
Building on the ash
546–540 BC · c. 540 BC
Herodotus adds one detail: eighty families who happened to be away that day survived. Together with newcomers they refounded Xanthos. The city rises on top of the burnt layer — and within two centuries it will raise the most magnificent monuments in Lycia.
A Lycian lord in a Greek temple
5th–4th c. BC · c. 390–380 BC
The Nereid Monument rises at Xanthos: the tomb of a Lycian dynast, built in the form of an Ionic temple. Its friezes show sieges, hunting scenes, nobles in Persian dress. East and West meet here in a single block of stone; today the monument fills one of the halls of the British Museum.
The trilingual stone
after 323 BC · 337 BC
The stele found at Letoon sets out the same decree in three languages: Lycian, Greek and Aramaic. These three columns standing side by side allowed Lycian to be deciphered in the 1970s. The same stone also marks the last great document of a language — after it comes silence.
After the ashes
42 BC · 42–41 BC
When Brutus is defeated and dies at Philippi, Antony declares Lycia free once more and sends help for the rebuilding of Xanthos. The city rises again, but never regains its old weight. From now on the centre of the League is unmistakably Patara.
The gods fall silent
AD 2nd–4th c. · AD 4th c.
As Christianity spreads, the temples close. Letoon, Leto’s sanctuary of a thousand years, is abandoned, and the stone of its altars is carried off to build basilicas. Lycia’s own gods — Kakasbos, Sozon, the lions of the rock tombs — are quietly effaced.
On the Lycian Way
Walls down to the sea
Sidyma – Pydnai – Letoon
The path drops from the mountain to the shore and Pydnai appears: a Hellenistic fortress with some fifteen towers and walls standing almost intact just behind the beach. A small place, but its walls are among the best preserved in Lycia — emptiness is sometimes the best conservator. From here the way turns into the mouth of the Xanthos valley, to the sanctuary of Letoon.
The hearth of the country
Letoon – Ksanthos – Patara
Twenty-two kilometres cross the heart of Lycia. Letoon is not a city but the sanctuary of the whole country: three temples, federal festivals, treaties cut into stone. Above it Xanthos, the capital that twice chose mass death over surrender. Then Patara: where the assembly of the League met, and the lighthouse Nero had raised in AD 64 — the oldest lighthouse known to stand.
The whole Lycian Way — 12 stages, 540 km
In mythology
The wolves show the way
Leto
Thirsty and worn out, Leto comes upon a pack of wolves. They do not attack; they go on ahead and lead her to the bank of the river Xanthos. Leto finds water, and in gratitude names the land after them: Lykia — the country of wolves. This origin story, told by ancient writers, ties the region’s name to the Greek lykos.
The shepherds and the frogs
Leto
When Leto comes to the spring to wash her twins, the local herdsmen foul the water and drive her away. The goddess curses them: “Since you begrudged me the water, let your lives be spent in it.” The herdsmen turn into frogs. The frog figures found in the sanctuary of Letoon are that story set in stone.
Letoon is founded
Leto
Leto is taken in where she found the water, and there she stays. In time three temples rise: Leto in the middle, Apollo and Artemis to either side. The sanctuary is the house not of a goddess but of a family — and for the Lycians the hearth not of one city but of the whole country.
Goddess of the country
Leto
Leto does not remain a stranger in Lycia; she merges with the native mother goddess and is called, in Lycian inscriptions, Eni Mahanahi — mother of the gods. When the League is founded, its federal festivals are held at Letoon and its treaties cut into stone there. The shared identity of Lycia gathers in this sanctuary.
Natri
Apollo
In Lycian inscriptions Apollo’s name is Natri. This shows that the god was not imported but matched to a local one. In the same inscriptions Artemis appears as Ertemi and the storm god as Trqqas. The Lycians did not take on the Greek gods — they began to call their own gods by Greek names as well.
The twin
Artemis
One of Letoon’s three temples is Artemis’, and it is the smallest — yet it is the oldest structure in the sanctuary. Here Artemis stands not in her brother’s shadow but at her mother’s side. In Lycia the cult of Leto is always a family cult.
Why sea nymphs on a tomb?
The Nereids
The Nereids are the protectors of sailors, and they were also held to be the ones who bring the dead to the far shore. The owner of the tomb was most likely Arbinas of the Xanthian dynasty. Here Lycia manages, with real mastery, to tell its own beliefs about the dead in Greek forms.