Fethiye Castle

Above the harbor in Fethiye, a hill known locally as the old acropolis carries the ruins of Fethiye Castle. The site had already served a defensive role in antiquity, when the hill formed part of the fortifications of the Lycian city of Telmessos, on whose remains the modern town now stands. Very little of the castle is intact, but the climb is short and the vantage point explains at a glance why anyone would fortify this particular hill.

Telmessos, the City Beneath the Modern Town

Telmessos was the most important port on the western edge of Lycia and, in the 5th century BC, the largest Lycian contributor to the Athenian league. Its Lycian name was Telebehi, and in antiquity it was widely known as a centre of prophecy and divination. The city passed through the usual sequence of masters for this coastline: the Persian general Harpagos in the mid-6th century BC, then Alexander the Great, then the Ptolemies, Seleucids and Pergamenes in the centuries after Alexander's death. It joined the Lycian League comparatively late, in the early first century BC, and prospered under Rome. Later it was known as Makri and then Meğri, before being renamed Fethiye in 1934 in honour of Fethi Bey, one of the first Ottoman air force pilots, killed in a crash in 1914.

Traces of the ancient city are scattered through the modern one. The best known is the Tomb of Amyntas, cut into the rock face on the slope below the castle around 350 BC, its facade carved in the form of an Ionic temple with a triangular pediment and measuring roughly 11 by 13 metres. Other rock-cut tombs in the classic Lycian house style are dotted along the same hillside, many of them carrying inscriptions. The Hellenistic and Roman theatre near the harbor, with seating for around 6,000 spectators across 28 rows, was excavated in the 1990s after centuries in which its stone had been quarried away for building material.

The Knights of St John and the Castle Walls

The structure visible today dates mainly to the 15th century, when the Knights of the Order of St John — based on Rhodes from 1310 to 1530 — rebuilt and strengthened the fortress on the acropolis, reportedly with support from Genoese allies. They did not start from nothing. The Crusader work reused Hellenistic and Roman masonry from the earlier acropolis, and rock tombs already cut into the hill were absorbed into the fabric of the fortification. The result was a compact hillside castle rather than a great citadel, its walls straggling along the ridge west of the tombs.

Its decline was largely geological. This is a seismically violent stretch of coast, and repeated earthquakes brought the walls down over the centuries. The most destructive in modern memory struck on 24-25 April 1957, killing 67 people and damaging or destroying some 3,200 buildings, around 90 per cent of the town. Much of the surviving ancient and medieval stonework was carted off afterwards and reused in the rebuilding, which is a large part of why so little masonry is left on the hill today.

What There Is to See

What survives is enough to make the climb worthwhile: broken walls, a scattering of worked stone, and open views across Fethiye's rooftops to the harbor and the gulf beyond. Sections of curtain wall and the stumps of towers can still be traced, built from the local limestone, with fragments of the older acropolis wall visible underneath in places. The approach is on foot through the steep lanes of the old quarter, past the rock tombs, and takes fifteen or twenty minutes from the seafront; access has been restricted at times while restoration has been under consideration, so it is worth asking locally before setting out. Late afternoon is the best time, when the light is off the water and the whole gulf is laid out below.

It's a fitting spot to take in the layout of the town before heading down toward the water and chartering a gulet from Fethiye for a closer look at the coastline the castle once watched over.