BC 700 – AD 1900
Telmessos
Telebehi · Fethiye
The western gate of Lycia and a harbour famous for its seers. The Tomb of Amyntas, cut into the cliff above the town with the façade of an Ionic temple, is visible from everywhere in the city. It lives on today as Fethiye.
- Lycian League votes
- 2
- Location
- 36.6221° N, 29.1141° E
- Today
- Fethiye, Muğla
Monuments and buildings
The tomb of Amyntas
An Ionic temple cut into the rock · c. 350 BC
The most magnificent rock tomb in Lycia. The front of a real Ionic temple is carved exactly into the sheer rock face: two fluted columns between antae, above them a three-fascia architrave, a row of dentils and a triangular pediment. Below there is a false door of four panels, with lion-head knockers in the lower ones. The actual entrance to the chamber is not through this door but through a narrow opening at the side. The Greek inscription on the anta names the owner: “Amyntas son of Hermagios”. We do not know who he was; that he was someone able to commission a tomb on this scale is certain.
The eastern necropolis
Rock tombs covering the slope · 4th c. BC – AD 2nd c.
Amyntas is not alone: dozens of rock tombs are ranged along the eastern slope, and it is these that draw the eastern edge of the city plan. Two types stand together — “house tombs” with flat lintels, turning timber house architecture into stone, and “temple tombs” with pediments. Some façades were left unfinished: the frame is roughly cut but the ornament was never begun. Lycian sarcophagi with pointed lids are scattered along the foot of the slope.
The theatre
A cavea behind the harbour, facing the bay · Hellenistic plan, rebuilt under Rome
A Greco-Roman theatre cut into the slope immediately behind the harbour, in the southwest of the city. The cavea of twenty-eight rows looks straight out over the bay — the audience saw the sea and the far shore behind the stage. The building lay buried for centuries; it was uncovered in excavations in the 1990s and now stands in the middle of modern Fethiye, among apartment blocks.
The ancient harbour
The bay of today’s Fethiye harbour · 5th c. BC – AD 7th c.
The reason Telmessos existed. Sheltered by islands, this bay was the western gate of the Lycian coast: the sea route from Caria joined Lycia here, and timber and produce went out from it. The city was never known for a great temple or monument; it was always known for its harbour and for its **seers**. Fethiye harbour stands today where the quay was — the same bay has done the same work for two and a half thousand years.
The acropolis and castle
A crusader castle on Lycian foundations · 4th c. BC foundation, AD 15th c. castle
The hill south of the city was the centre of its defence. The lower courses of the wall are the large polygonal blocks of the Lycian period; the curtain wall, towers and battlements above them are far later — a medieval castle built by the Knights of Saint John of Rhodes. Seeing stones laid two thousand years apart in the same wall is Telmessos in miniature: the city was never abandoned, only used again and again.
The sarcophagi
Lycian sarcophagi left among the streets · 4th c. BC – AD 2nd c.
The strangest thing about Telmessos: the tombs that could not be cut into rock are scattered through the city itself. With their pointed, upturned-boat lids, Lycian sarcophagi stand at the edges of streets and between houses. They still do — in modern Fethiye you may find one in the garden of a government office or between two apartment blocks. The largest rises on a high base and carries a funerary inscription on its chest.
The urban fabric
Telmessos beneath modern Fethiye · 5th c. BC – AD 7th c.
This is the part of the model with the least evidence behind it — and the reason is interesting. Telmessos was never abandoned: it became Anastasiopolis, then Makri, then Fethiye. When the earthquake of 1957 destroyed the town it was rebuilt, and the ancient fabric went under today’s streets. Its agora, its avenues and its houses therefore cannot be excavated. The settlement shown here is a **representative** fabric placed within the known limits of the city. Telmessos owed its fame not to its buildings but to its seers: according to Herodotus, Croesus of Lydia, and according to Arrian, Alexander the Great, had their omens read by the diviners of Telmessos.
This city in history
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.
Pericle of Limyra
5th–4th c. BC · c. 380–360 BC
In the east Pericle of Limyra grows strong; he besieges Telmessos, binds the west to himself as well, and joins the Satraps’ Revolt. This short-lived union is Lycia’s own experiment in self-rule. When the revolt is crushed, the region passes into the hands of the Carian satrap Mausolus.
Surrender without a battle
334–333 BC · 334/333 BC
Arrian writes that Telmessos, Pinara, Xanthos, Patara and some thirty smaller settlements opened their gates without a fight. To a region weary of Persian tribute, a Macedonian master was no different from a distant one. Lycia changes hands in the course of a single winter.
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.
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.
The earth shakes
AD 2nd–4th c. · AD 141
A great earthquake strikes Lycia from end to end. From Telmessos to Myra, theatres, colonnaded streets and baths come down. The inscriptions say the cities were levelled to the ground. The largest rebuilding effort in the region’s history begins.
The fortune of Opramoas
AD 2nd–4th c. · c. AD 125–155
After the earthquake, Opramoas of Rhodiapolis rains money on dozens of cities: theatres, baths, granaries, dowry funds. The inscription covering the walls of his mausoleum records what he gave to each city, one by one — the longest record of benefaction in the ancient world.
The names remain
AD ~395–1300 · AD 13th–14th c.
Turkmen principalities settle the region, and the Teke beylik takes the coast. The ancient cities empty one by one, and their stones are absorbed into village houses. But the names hold on: Telmessos becomes Fethiye, Antiphellos becomes Kaş, Myra becomes Demre, a lord’s manor is raised on the acropolis of Tlos — and the map is still waiting to be read.
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.
The mountain of the seers
Ovacık – Faralya
The way begins on the shoulder of Telmessos. This city was famous for its divination: according to Herodotus, Croesus of Lydia sent men here to have an ill omen read, and Alexander too consulted the seers of Telmessos. The first day climbs the mountain behind the city — Anticragus in antiquity — and leaves the lagoon of Ölüdeniz far below.
The whole Lycian Way — 12 stages, 540 km
In mythology
To Troy
Sarpedon
The Lycians come from farther away than any other ally of Troy. Sarpedon shares the command with his cousin Glaucus; all through the Iliad the Lycian contingents appear wherever the fighting is hardest. This is Lycia’s first and strongest entry into Greek epic.
Nearby cities
Karmylessos · Kadyanda · Daedala · Pinara · Krya