Simena

Most of the ancient cities along the Lycian coast announce themselves with theatres, agoras and long ranks of rock-cut tombs. Simena does the opposite. Part of it is underwater, part of it has a village built on top of it, and there is no road to either. That combination, a working fishing hamlet sitting directly on a town first documented in the 4th century BC, is what makes Kaleköy one of the most photographed stops between Kaş and Demre and, at the same time, one of the least developed.

A Small Voice in the Lycian League

The fishing village of Kaleköy, on the Kekova coast between Kaş and Demre, sits directly on top of the ancient Lycian town of Simena. Grave inscriptions and coin finds trace the settlement back to the 4th century BC, though as a small member of a sympolity with Aperlae, Isinda and Apollonia, Simena held only a single vote in the Lycian League, a fraction of the influence wielded by larger neighbours such as Myra.

The league itself is worth pausing on. It was a federation of Lycian cities that allotted votes according to size, pooled a treasury and elected its magistrates jointly, and it is often cited as one of the ancient world's earliest federal systems. Within it, the four towns of the sympolity, with Aperlae as the senior partner and Simena, Isinda and Apollonia attached to it, shared a single vote between them. An ancient set of sailing directions, the Stadiasmus Maris Magni, places Simena 60 stadia from Aperlae, roughly eleven kilometres, and records the town under the variant name Somena; the coastline has changed little enough that the distance still reads true today.

The Castle Above the Harbour

Above the waterline, a small fortress built into the hillside overlooks the harbour, and the modern village, reachable only by boat or on foot from the neighbouring hamlet of Üçağız, has no road access at all, which has kept it free of cars and large-scale development. The walls are medieval, Byzantine in origin with later repairs and additions, and they enclose the acropolis of the ancient town rather than replacing it.

Inside the circuit, carved straight into the bedrock, is the smallest theatre known from any Lycian city: a shallow bank of seats with room for only a couple of hundred spectators, sometimes read instead as a bouleuterion, the council chamber where a town of this size would have conducted its business. Either interpretation fits Simena's modest standing. From the top of the walls the view runs across the strait to the long grey ridge of Kekova island, and it is the single best vantage point on this stretch of coast.

On the slope east of the village a necropolis of Lycian sarcophagi stands among olive trees, their heavy pointed lids still in place, a shape Lycian tomb-builders favoured because it echoed the timber roofs of the houses they lived in. One sarcophagus sits in the shallows just below the village, half submerged and leaning, and it has become the emblem of the entire Kekova run.

What Lies Beneath the Waterline

What makes the site unusual is how much of it now lies underwater. An earthquake around two thousand years ago dropped part of the ancient town below sea level, and the remains of a Roman-era bath complex and rock-cut tombs can still be seen just beneath the surface from a boat. The bath complex is the most securely dated structure at Simena: its inscription records a dedication to the emperor Titus, whose reign lasted only from 79 to 81 AD, which pins the building to a narrow window and shows that a town with a fraction of one league vote still had the means and the motive to flatter Rome in stone.

The subsidence is generally attributed to a sequence of earthquakes in the 2nd century AD that dropped the coastline all along this bay. The clarity of the water does the rest of the work: on a calm day you can pick out wall lines, door openings and the treads of staircases running down into the blue, most of it lying only a metre or two below the surface.

Kekova, Üçağız and the Protected Zone

Simena is one of four ancient towns packed into a very small area. Across the strait, the northern shore of Kekova island carries the ruins of Dolichiste, the settlement usually meant when people say "the sunken city", a long stretch of foundations, cisterns, harbour walls and rock-cut staircases now running straight into the sea. West of Kaleköy lies Teimiussa, beneath the modern village of Üçağız, with its own tombs standing in the shallows, and further west again is Aperlae, the sympolity's senior partner, likewise partly submerged.

The whole area has been protected since 18 January 1990, when it was declared a Special Environmental Protection Area by the Turkish environment ministry. Swimming, snorkelling and diving over the sunken ruins were prohibited from that date in order to keep the archaeology intact, which is why tour boats slow to a crawl along the Kekova shore rather than stopping there; a limited section at the northwestern end of the island has since been opened to permitted diving. Anchoring, mooring and construction are regulated inside the zone as well, and the effect has been to freeze this coastline in a way that is rare in the Mediterranean.

Visiting Kaleköy

There is still no road to Kaleköy. Boats come across from Üçağız, Kaş and Demre, and a footpath links the village to Üçağız for anyone who prefers to walk in. The village itself is a handful of pensions and restaurants strung along a stepped path, with the climb up to the castle taking about ten minutes from the water. Shoes with grip are worth having: the path is worn limestone and slick in places, with no shade on the way up.

The season runs from spring to late autumn. May, June, September and October are the most comfortable months for the climb and the ruins, while July and August are the hottest and the busiest on the water. Boats generally anchor offshore rather than tying up, since the harbour is small and the protected zone limits what can be done directly over the archaeology. That mix of sunken ruins and a car-free harbour village makes Kaleköy one of the more distinctive calls on the Kekova run; many gulet cruises in Turkey call in here, usually anchoring offshore for a swim over the ruins before a walk through the village itself.