Ghost cities of the Lycian Way: the ruins the trail walks through

The western cities: Sidyma to Patara

Sidyma is the first, on the Alınca to Bel stage: the village of Dodurga is built inside it, with tombs in the gardens and the mosque on the agora. Pydnai comes next, a Hellenistic fortress on the delta whose walls the trail passes straight through on the Bel to Karadere stage; nobody restored it and nobody guards it.

Then the two that matter to historians. Letoon was the federal sanctuary of the Lycian League, three temples standing in marsh water, and Xanthos its capital, the city that twice chose fire over surrender and whose tombs are in the British Museum. Both are UNESCO sites, both on the easy Karadere to Xanthos stage, both ticketed at about €3 for foreign visitors. Patara, Lycia’s port and the birthplace of St Nicholas, closes the west on the next stage: a restored parliament, a theatre in the dunes, and a ticket of around €15 that also buys the beach.

The five around Kaş with no road

This is the stretch that gave this site its name. Phellos sits on the ridge above Kaş on the Gökçeören to Çukurbağ stage: sarcophagi, walls and a bull relief on a summit that no road reaches, and no ticket office either. Kaş itself was Antiphellos, its port, and keeps the theatre, a Doric rock tomb and a sarcophagus in the middle of the market street.

East of town the trail passes the small tombs of Sebeda above Limanağzı, then the side trail to Apollonia near Boğazcık, a hill city with pillar tombs and a theatre reached only on foot. Then Aperlai, the harbour town that minted coins from purple dye and lost its harbour quarter to the sea, on the Boğazcık to Aperlai stage: breakwaters under clear water, towers in the scrub, two pensions and no road. And finally Teimiussa, under the fishing village of Üçağız with tombs standing at the harbour, and Simena, the castle village of Kaleköy with a sarcophagus in the shallows, on the Aperlai to Üçağız stage. Across the water from both lies Kekova, the sunken city of Dolchiste, which the trail looks at all afternoon and which nobody may swim over; the reason is in a guide of its own.

Simena castle is the only ticket on this stretch, around €4. Everything else is free because there is no gate to put a ticket office in, and protected all the same: walk among the walls, swim beside them, take nothing.

Demre and the harbour of Myra

The Kaleköy to Demre stage passes the minor tomb sites of İstlada and Hoyran on the headlands, then reaches Andriake, the harbour of Myra, where Hadrian’s granary now houses the Lycian Civilisations Museum, and the river sanctuary of Sura by the footbridge. Myra itself sits under modern Demre: the cliff of house-shaped tombs and the Roman theatre, ticketed at about €13, with the Church of St Nicholas in town at around €17. How to reach Demre without walking is in our Demre day.

The eastern cities: Alakilise to Phaselis

Beyond Demre the ruins thin out and get higher. Alakilise is a Byzantine church in the mountains on the Demre to Finike crossing, the usual first camp, with the hill town of Belos on the descent. Melanippe is walls near the Gelidonya lighthouse on the Karaöz to Adrasan stage. Olympos, a Roman city in a river gorge opening onto the beach, is the prize of the Adrasan to Çıralı stage at about €10, with the eternal flames of the Chimaera above Çıralı. Phaselis, three harbours and a paved street from sea to sea, is on the coastal Tekirova to Kuzdere stage, also about €10. Trebenna on the pass above Geyikbayırı and Neapolis near Antalya close the list.

Fees quoted are foreign-visitor prices from the 2024 and 2026 published lists and change every March; Turkish residents use the Müzekart.

Why the tombs look like houses

The rock tombs at Myra, Kaş and Xanthos have doorways, beam ends and pitched roofs carved into the cliff because the Lycians housed their dead the way they housed themselves: in timber-framed houses on stilts, the same shape as the wooden granaries still standing in Bezirgan on the Kalkan to Bezirgan stage. Walk past the granaries in the morning and the tombs in the afternoon and the connection is obvious. It is one of the small pleasures of doing this coast on foot rather than by coach.