BC 690 – AD 1300
Phaselis
A trading city of three harbours founded by Rhodian seafarers. The colonnaded street joining two of them begins at Hadrian’s triumphal arch. On the border of Lycia and Pamphylia, at the foot of Mount Olympos.
- Lycian League votes
- 3
- Location
- 36.5236° N, 30.5525° E
- Today
- Tekirova · Kemer, Antalya
Monuments and buildings
The three harbours
The whole reason the city existed · 7th century BC – AD 7th century
This is what sets Phaselis apart from every other Lycian city: a single peninsula with three separate harbours. The broad northern bay (1) took large freighters, the southwestern bay (19) shallow craft; the small basin in the middle (2) was the naval harbour (3), its mouth narrowed by two towers. Whichever way the wind blows, one harbour stays sheltered — the best thing a trading city could ask for. It struck a ship’s prow on its coins; this was exactly what the Rhodian founders had come looking for on the Lycian coast.
The harbour street
The spine joining two harbours · 3rd c. BC – AD 3rd c.
A street running from the south harbour to the central one, colonnaded and lined with shops on both sides. It is some 225 metres long and over 20 metres wide — extravagantly grand for a provincial city. The reason is simple: this street is not a street but an **extension of the quay**. Cargo unloaded in one harbour was walked along it to the ship in the other; Phaselis thus became the short cut for merchants who did not want to sail round the coast. Every monumental building in the city is ranged along its two sides.
The Arch of Hadrian
For an imperial visit · AD 129/131
A monumental gate of three parts at the southern end of the harbour street, passed by everyone entering the city from the south harbour. It was built for the emperor Hadrian’s tour of Lycia, and its inscription names him. What stands today is the base and the jamb blocks — the superstructure has fallen, its pieces scattered around. This was the most visible gift a city could give its emperor: rebuilding the gate meant renewing the face of the city.
The theatre
On the western slope of the acropolis · AD 2nd century
A theatre for about 1,500 people, cut into the western slope of the acropolis hill. Those seated look not at the stage but over it, at **the city and the harbour**: the cavea is placed so that the harbour street and the central harbour appear behind the action. The five doors of the lower storey of the stage building and the windows above them are still standing. There are signs suggesting it was turned into an arena in the Roman period — the lower rows removed and a barrier built around the orchestra.
The Great Bath and gymnasium
The most substantial building in the city · AD 2nd–3rd century
A large bath-and-gymnasium complex just south of the central harbour, on the western side of the street. Hot, warm and cold rooms stand side by side, with a palaestra court to the north. The walls survive up to three metres in places, and the springing of the vaults can be read. In a harbour city it is no accident that the bath is this close to the quay — a man off a ship washed here first, then entered the town.
The Small Bath and latrine
The everyday face of the street · AD 2nd–3rd century
On the eastern side of the street, facing the Great Bath, stands a second and smaller bath with a latrine — a public lavatory — attached to it. The latrine is among the best-preserved small structures at Phaselis: the stone settings of the seats and the flushing channel running beneath them are still visible. These two are not among the city’s showpieces, but they are what tells you how a Roman city actually worked.
The agora of Hadrian
The middle one of three agoras · AD 2nd century
The second of the three agoras on the western side of the street. Its inscription dates the building to the reign of Hadrian. A rectangular court, a colonnaded gallery on three sides, rows of shops behind. Phaselis’ peculiarity shows here: the city built three separate agoras in three separate centuries and **never pulled the old one down**. Walking between the Domitianic, Hadrianic and Byzantine agoras side by side means crossing three centuries in a hundred metres.
The nymphaeum
The fountain of the street · AD 2nd century
A monumental fountain standing in the middle of the harbour street, where the road widens. Water coming in from the aqueduct poured into a basin here, and the townspeople filled their jars from it. Its front was niched and set with statues; the stone frames of the niches can still be read. In Roman cities a nymphaeum does not merely distribute water — it announces the name of whoever brought it. It is a monument of benefaction.
The agora of Domitian and the city square
The oldest of the three agoras · End of the AD 1st century
The agora built in the reign of the emperor Domitian, with the city square attached to it. The oldest and plainest of the three. After his death Domitian was formally condemned at Rome (damnatio memoriae) and his name chiselled off stone in many places — that the inscription here survives shows that the provinces did not always follow the anger of the centre. The square was the junction where the street opened onto the agoras.
The Byzantine agora
The third and the last · AD 5th–6th century
The westernmost and latest of the three agoras. The city still needed a square after Rome; this time a smaller, more enclosed, more defensible court was built. There are reused blocks in its walls — stone stripped from older buildings. Phaselis went dark after the Arab raids of the 7th century; this agora gives the measure of the city’s last centuries.
The temple of Zeus Boulaios
The god of the council · 2nd century BC – AD 2nd century
A small temple on the southern foot of the acropolis, dedicated to the city’s council. The epithet “Boulaios” describes this particular face of Zeus: the god of decisions, of deliberation and of the oath. Members of the council swore here before they convened. What remains of the building is its podium, a few column bases and blocks with votive inscriptions. Phaselis was one of the six great cities holding three votes in the Lycian League — this temple is the religious counterpart of that weight.
The northeast necropolis and the aqueduct
The ridge does two jobs: the dead, and water · 4th c. BC – AD 4th c.
The northern ridge carries two of the city’s needs. The necropolis runs along its eastern slope — sarcophagi, rock tombs and monumental tombs ranged parallel to the road, so that the first thing an arriving traveller sees is the city’s dead. Along the top of the ridge runs the aqueduct, bringing water from springs to the north down to the city arch by arch, distributing it to the nymphaeum and the baths. It is reckoned among the longest water lines in Lycia; in places its two-storey arches are still standing.
The mainland settlement
The city that would not fit on the peninsula · 4th c. BC – AD 6th c.
A separate walled settlement on the hill northwest of the peninsula. Phaselis had three harbours but no flat land; as the city grew, the overflow spilled onto the mainland, onto this hill. There is no monument here, no agora — only houses, cisterns, terraces and a wall. If the city on the peninsula was its showpiece face, this hill is where it actually lived.
This city in history
The first certain date
~800–600 BC · 690 BC
Sailors from Rhodes found Phaselis at the eastern end of the coast. It is the first event on the Lycian shore whose year we know. Contact with the Greek world is no longer a passing raid but a permanent neighbourhood.
The shadow of Athens
5th–4th c. BC · 468 BC
When Cimon scatters the Persian fleet at the Eurymedon, the Lycian coast is drawn into the Delian League. Phaselis resists at first, submits under siege, and is entered on the tribute list at ten talents. The cities pass from one empire to another, year by year.
The golden crown of Phaselis
334–333 BC · winter 333 BC
Phaselis sends him a crown of gold; Alexander stays in the city, and together they pull down the Pisidian fort that had been harrying its people. Returning one night from a feast, he hangs garlands on the statue of the poet Theodectes — a pupil of his own teacher, Aristotle.
The Koinon Lykion is founded
168 BC · after 168 BC
Freedom does not scatter the cities, it draws them together: twenty-three of them found a common assembly. Its name is the Koinon Lykion — the League of the Lycians. Each city runs its own affairs; war, coinage, foreign relations and the high court are held in common.
Three votes, two votes, one vote
168 BC · 2nd c. BC
The League’s invention is weighted representation: the six largest cities hold three votes each, the middling ones two, the small ones one. Costs and taxes are divided in the same proportion. Neither do the great crush the small, nor the small live off the backs of the great.
One coinage, one army
168 BC · 2nd–1st c. BC
The League strikes its own silver: the head of Apollo on one face, a lyre and the legend ΛΥΚΙΩΝ on the other — with the initials of the minting city along the edge. One currency, one army, thirty cities each with its own square: here the idea of federation takes solid form.
The age of twenty-three cities
~168–43 BC · 2nd–1st c. BC
For a century Lycia governs itself and grows rich. Twenty-three voting cities, together with the dozens of towns around them, make up a single political body. The region’s population, its buildings and its trade stand at the height of their history.
Cedar, olives, grain
~168–43 BC · 2nd–1st c. BC
The Lycian mountains yield ship timber, the plains olives and grain. The quays of Patara and Andriake are stops on the road to Alexandria and Rome; Phaselis is the gateway to eastern trade. Harbours multiply along the coast, and inland new cisterns and olive presses.
Zeniketes the pirate
~168–43 BC · 78–77 BC
The Cilician pirate Zeniketes seizes Olympos, Corycus and Phaselis; for years the coast is his base. When the Roman commander Servilius besieges his stronghold, Zeniketes sets his house alight with his family inside. The two cities lose their votes in the League for having dealt with a pirate.
A road map in stone
AD 43 · AD 45
The monument set up at the entrance to Patara lists every road and every distance in the new province: more than sixty routes, written out mile by mile. The Stadiasmus Patarensis is the most detailed road document to survive from the Roman world.
On the Lycian Way
Five hundred and forty kilometres
Likya Yolu
A line that begins at Ovacık above Fethiye and ends at Geyikbayırı, on the doorstep of Antalya. The Lycian Way was waymarked in 1999 — so the path itself is young. The ground it treads is not: goat and mule tracks, short stretches of Roman paving, steps cut into rock, cisterns. The route passes through or below some twenty-five ancient cities. Its worth lies not in its own age but in what it strings together.
Gifts to twenty-eight cities
Limyra – Rhodiapolis – Gagai
Rhodiapolis is a small city, but it produced the most generous man in Lycia: Opramoas. When the earthquake of AD 141 wrecked the region he sent money from his own fortune to twenty-eight cities — theatres, baths, walls, grain. The inscription on the wall of his tomb lists those gifts one by one and is the longest known inscription in Anatolia. From there the way descends to Gagai, on the sea.
The city bought with dried fish
Yanartaş – Phaselis – Geyikbayırı
Phaselis was founded by Rhodians around 690 BC and, the story goes, they bought the site from a shepherd for a load of dried fish — the city never shook off the joke. It had three harbours; Alexander wintered here in 334/333 BC and was met with a golden crown. From here the way climbs the skirts of Tahtalı and ends outside Lycia, on the threshold of Antalya.
The whole Lycian Way — 12 stages, 540 km
In mythology
The lead-tipped spear
Bellerophon
The Chimaera breathes fire; whatever comes near burns. Bellerophon fixes lead to the point of his spear and drives it into the beast’s open mouth. The lead melts and runs down its throat, and the creature dies of its own fire. The flames still burning on the slope above Olympos are held, in local telling, to be its last breath.
Yanartaş
Chimaera
On the slope above Olympos, flames come up between the stones and never go out. They shrink in rain and grow in wind, but they have burned for thousands of years. Ancient travellers recorded the place as the lair of the Chimaera; to sailors it was also a beacon.
A country that lives with the sea
The Nereids
The Lycian coast is full of islands, coves and sunken cities; here the sea is not a border but a road. So the Nereids appear not only on one monument but on the coins and votive offerings of the coastal cities. A people who put out to sea every day take the nymphs of the sea along with them.
Nearby cities
Olympos · Kitanaura · Rhodiapolis · Idebessos · Gagai