Telandria Ancient City

Tersane Island is the largest island in the Gulf of Fethiye, lying off Gocek on Turkey's Mediterranean coast. Its Turkish name means shipyard, and it earned it: boats were built and repaired here under the Ottomans, and the remains of that yard are still on the shore. Long before that the island was called Telandria, and it carried a town of its own.

Where the Island Is

Tersane Island belongs to the Fethiye district of Mugla. It is roughly triangular, covers about 2.5 square kilometres, and is separated from Domuz Island by a narrow channel to the west. There are three small bays. The one in the northwest corner is the best protected and the one boats use: it has a quay and a seasonal restaurant, and the main ruins are a short walk from the water. A second, shallower harbour sits on the northeast side.

Telandria and the Town of Telandros

In antiquity the island lay in Caria, and the town on it was called Telandros. It was a polis in its own right and a member of the Delian League, the alliance led by Athens after the Persian wars. Telandros appears in the Athenian tribute lists between 453/2 and 433/2 BC, paying small amounts, which is the clearest surviving evidence of how modest the place was. Pliny the Elder later recorded Telandria as an island whose population had gone. Ruins from the Lycian period survive on the island as well.

The Shipyard

The Ottoman-era yard near the northwestern bay is the reason the island has the name it does. Enough of it survives to read the layout: a slipway, the stone footings of workshops, a cut pool where hulls could be floated and tested, and a sea gate connecting that pool to open water. The island was used for building and repairing small vessels rather than warships, and the work was maintenance as much as construction.

The Abandoned Village

A Greek community farmed and fished here for generations, and left in 1923 under the population exchange between Greece and Turkey. What they built is still standing among the trees: single-storey stone houses with small windows and pitched roofs, in the same idiom used all along this coast, with buried wine jars and stone ovens among the remains. Fruit trees from the old orchards still grow wild, and there are tombs scattered around the settlement.

Close to the houses are the remains of a small church, which local people still call the Panagia. The island has had no permanent population since the exchange.

Visiting Tersane Island

Most people arrive by boat, tie up in the northwest bay and spend the afternoon between the ruins, the water and the restaurant. The walk through the old village takes under an hour, the paths carry on up the slope for views across the gulf, and the swimming off the rocks is as good as anywhere in the Gocek bays. Since the island can only be reached from the water, many visitors combine a day of sightseeing with a private gulet charter from Gocek.