St. Nicholas Church

The Church of St Nicholas stands in the modern town of Demre, on the site where St Nicholas served as bishop of the ancient city of Myra in the 4th century AD — the historical figure whose life of quiet generosity later gave rise to the legend of Santa Claus. The present building was constructed in the 6th century, around AD 520, on the foundations of an earlier church associated with the saint, and it grew over the following centuries into one of the most visited pilgrimage sites in the Byzantine world.

Damaged repeatedly by earthquakes and raids, the church was substantially rebuilt as a domed structure and later restored in the 19th century, when a Russian-funded project added a bell tower. It remained in religious use until the population exchange of 1923, after which it was preserved as a museum, and it has been on UNESCO's tentative World Heritage list since 2000. Visitors today can see fragments of Byzantine frescoes, marble columns and floor mosaics inside, alongside an ongoing archaeological dig that in December 2024 uncovered a previously unknown sarcophagus beneath the church's mosaic floor. For many travellers, a visit here is combined with time spent chartering a gulet in Turkey along the nearby Lycian coastline.