Muğla Kayaköy Archaeological Site

KAYAKÖY (Rock village) RUINS

Although the history of Kayaköyü, which is located 8 kilometers south of Fethiye and known as Karmylassos in the Ancient Period, goes back to the 3rd millennium BC, according to philological data, the existing remains of this city have not yet been recovered from the 4th century BC. Charles Fellows, one of the many travelers who visited Teke Peninsula in the 18th and 19th centuries, defined Gemiler Island in the south of Kayaköy as Karmylassos. However, when compared with the descriptions of the ancient writer Strabo, it is clearly understood that this definition is not correct.

In the city, which was called Levissi at that time, the building groups we watched based on the hillside are the structures built by the Greeks.

The city, which was evacuated as a result of the rights granted to the minorities in the late periods of the Ottoman Empire, has taken the appearance of a ghost city with the destruction of the wooden door, window and top cover systems of the city due to natural factors.

During the period of use in the abandoned city, there are 350 to 400 houses, each of which is not larger than 50 m2, does not block each other in terms of view and light, generally two-storey, the lower floors are in the form of a cellar, and there are underground cisterns where rain water is collected on the roof at the entrance. In addition to the residences, there are many chapels, 2 large churches, 1 school building and 1 customs building scattered among the houses.

Churches are at the top of the list of buildings that offer the visitor visuality in the settlement. The Upper Church, whose original name was Taksiyarhis, was built on a dominant hill near the middle of the settlement. Surrounded by high walls, the atrium is covered with a geometric pattern of mosaic flooring of black and white pebbles. The church, which was generally built with crushed and smoothed stones using lime mortar, is covered with a thick pink plaster on the outside. Door and window frames are covered with marble. There is a cistern filled with rubble under a part of the three-arched narthex. The entrance to the single nave structure is provided by doors that are displaced from the south to the west and opened from the narthex.

The Lower Church, whose original name was Panayia Pirgiotissa, located on the western border of the settlement has survived to the present day in a better preservation. The most important factor in its preservation is that the building was used as a mosque until the 1960s. You can enter the garden of the church, which is surrounded by high walls, through the door to the east. There is a bell tower in the south-east corner of the garden and a small cemetery in the north-east. The atrium is covered with mosaics made of pebble stones, just like in the Upper Church. Unfortunately, we cannot see all of them today. The three-step seating row adjacent to the garden wall from the south was made for visitors to sit in religious ceremonies.