Patara Beach

Patara Beach runs for about 18 kilometres along Turkey's Turquoise Coast, backed by a wide belt of sand dunes and, immediately behind them, the ruins of the ancient city of Patara. There is no resort on it and no road along it, and the main access runs through the archaeological site itself, which is a large part of why the beach still looks roughly as it must have when the harbour behind it was one of the busiest in the eastern Mediterranean.

The Lycian League's Great Port

Patara was Lycia's principal seaport and one of the most powerful members of the Lycian League, holding three votes in its assembly, the maximum any single city was allowed. The League met in the bouleuterion here, a chamber built in the late 2nd or early 1st century BC with room for roughly 1,400 delegates; it remained in use for centuries and has since been reconstructed. Patara also had an oracle of Apollo, mentioned by Herodotus and ranked by later writers second in importance only to Delphi, which was said to prophesy only during the six winter months.

Alexander the Great took the city's surrender in 333 BC. Paul of Tarsus changed ships at Patara on his way to Syria, an episode recorded in Acts 21. By local tradition St Nicholas, the historical figure behind Father Christmas, was born here around AD 270 before settling at Myra further east along the same coast.

What Stands Behind the Sand

The site survives unusually well because the sand that buried it also protected it. Systematic excavation began in 1988 and is still under way. The theatre, rebuilt under Antoninus Pius in AD 147 after an earthquake and seating around 6,000, had to be dug out of the dune that had swallowed it. A triple-arched monumental gate, the Arch of Mettius Modestus, was raised in honour of a Roman governor around AD 100 and still marks the northern entrance. The granary built at the time of Hadrian's visit in AD 131 measures 75 by 25 metres and was divided into eight compartments for goods heading to Rome.

The most striking single monument is the lighthouse at the harbour mouth, put up under Nero in the AD 60s and standing 26 metres on a three-tiered square base, among the oldest surviving lighthouses anywhere. An earthquake and tsunami brought it down in 1481 and its blocks lay where they fell until a long restoration reassembled them. Another find, the Stadiasmus Patarensis, unearthed in 1993, is a road monument dedicated to Claudius that lists the routes built across the province with their place names and distances, effectively a Roman road atlas of Lycia carved in stone. The harbour all this served silted up, the city was abandoned, and there is now a reed marsh where the anchorage used to be.

Turtles, Dunes and the Rules That Protect Them

Patara was declared a Special Environmental Protection Area in 1990, covering the beach, the dune system and the small wetlands behind it. The sand is one of the most important nesting grounds in Turkey for the endangered Caretta caretta loggerhead turtle, and the beach closes to visitors in the evening through the May-to-October nesting season so that females can come ashore and hatchlings can reach the water undisturbed. Vehicles are kept off the sand and construction along the shore is restricted, which is why there is still nothing behind the beach but dunes, marsh and ruins.

Getting There by Sea and by Road

Patara lies about 17 kilometres west of Kalkan by road and, despite that proximity, belongs administratively to the neighbouring Kaş district. The village of Gelemiş at the site entrance is the nearest accommodation. Boats cannot land on the beach itself, so it is normally reached from an anchorage nearby, which makes it one of the anchorages you'll visit on a private gulet charter from Kalkan, usually combined with a walk through the ruins earlier in the day, before the heat builds and before the beach and its dunes get busy.