Porto Genoese Bay

Porto Genoese Bay, known locally as Porto Ceneviz, lies at the foot of Mount Musa between Adrasan and Olympos on the Mediterranean coast of Antalya province. There is no road into it. The bay opens off the Gulf of Adrasan on a stretch of shoreline that also shelters the anchorages of Sazak and Akseki, and the only practical way in is by boat, which is precisely why its turquoise water and narrow strip of sand and pebble have stayed as undisturbed as they have. Ruined stone walls on the slope above the beach are what give the bay its name.

A Bay Inside a Protected National Park

Ceneviz sits within Beydağları Coastal National Park, declared on 16 March 1972 and today covering roughly 31,000 hectares of coast, pine forest and mountain south-west of Antalya. The bay is additionally registered as a first-degree natural site, the strictest conservation category in the Turkish system, which is what has kept building off this shoreline. The same park boundary encloses the ancient city of Olympos, one of the six leading members of the Lycian League and a holder of three votes in its assembly, along with the perpetual flames of the Chimaera on the slopes above Çıralı.

The mountain behind the bay, Musa Dağı, rises to 997 metres at its summit, Eren Tepe, and drops almost straight into the sea north-east of Adrasan. The Lycian Way long-distance path crosses its western slope: the stage between Adrasan and Olympos runs about sixteen kilometres and climbs to roughly 746 metres before descending to Çıralı, and it is the only realistic way to look down on this coast from land.

Where the Name Comes From

The fortification whose remains stand above the beach is traditionally linked to the Genoese, who ran a network of trading posts and fortified enclaves across the Mediterranean, the Aegean and the Black Sea between the 11th and 15th centuries. Genoa's position in the eastern Mediterranean was transformed by the Treaty of Nymphaeum in 1261, which rewarded the republic for helping Byzantium recover Constantinople and pushed Venice out of the approaches to the Black Sea; colonies such as Chios and Phocaea followed. Small sheltered coves like this one mattered on that network as places to wait out weather and take on water rather than as towns in their own right. In Turkish the word for Genoese is Ceneviz, and that is the name the bay has carried ever since.

Wildlife and How Visitors Arrive

The clear, sheltered water and seagrass beds along this coast support loggerhead sea turtles, and the nearby Kumluca and Çıralı beaches are among the nesting sites protected under Turkish national legislation; the critically endangered Mediterranean monk seal is also recorded along the Antalya shoreline, though sightings are rare. Because there is no settlement, no jetty and no facility of any kind inside the park boundary here, the bay is best reached during a gulet cruise along the Turkey coast — most boats anchor for a swim and a snorkel on the run between Antalya, Adrasan and Olympos. Bring what you need, take it away again, and the bay keeps the stillness that drew sailors to shelter here in the first place.