Kekova Sunken City

On the northern shore of Kekova island, in Antalya Province, the broken outlines of an ancient settlement lie just beneath the surface of the sea. Known in antiquity as Dolichiste, the town was flattened by a powerful earthquake in the 2nd century AD, which dropped stretches of its streets, staircases and building foundations below sea level. Rebuilt in smaller form during the Byzantine era, it was ultimately abandoned after repeated Arab raids and never resettled. The island itself, about 4.5 square kilometres of bare limestone facing the mainland near Demre, has stayed uninhabited ever since.

Dolichiste: The Town the Sea Took

What survives is unusually legible for a submerged site. Because the ruins run along the waterline rather than lying far offshore, it is possible to pick out house walls, rock-cut stairways that end abruptly in the water, and the edges of quays following the shore. The subsidence was not dramatic in absolute terms — the coastline dropped by a matter of a few metres — but it was enough to take the lower part of the town permanently out of use, and no one ever built on it again.

The island's other significant ruin sits at the northwestern end, in a narrow inlet still called Tersane, or Shipyard Bay, roughly 150 metres long and 60 metres wide. Here stand the walls of a church of the 5th century with its apse still intact, along with at least five cisterns, a watchtower, mooring bollards and rings cut for ships, and vats used for salting fish. Taken together with the sunken city, the picture is of a working coast rather than a monumental one: a place that repaired hulls, stored water and processed catch.

Simena, Teimiussa and the Villages Around the Bay

The sunken city is only one part of a much larger archaeological landscape. Facing Kekova across the channel is Kaleköy, ancient Simena, a village that still has no road and can be reached only by boat or on foot. Its castle was rebuilt by the Knights of Rhodes on older Lycian foundations, and inside the walls is the smallest theatre in Lycia: seven tiers of seats cut straight into the rock, enough for perhaps 300 people. East of the houses lies a necropolis of heavy sarcophagi among olive trees, with more of them standing in the shallows offshore. In the Lycian League, Simena had no vote of its own — it shared one with Aperlae, Isinda and Apollonia in a joint arrangement headed by Aperlae, which Pliny the Elder placed sixty stadia away.

A kilometre along the shore is Üçağız, ancient Teimiussa, whose Turkish name means "three mouths" and describes the openings that connect its sheltered water to the open sea. At the eastern end of the harbour is a scatter of rock-cut house tombs and Roman sarcophagi, some carrying Lycian inscriptions that place settlement here by the 4th century BC, along with a dock about 28 metres long carved out of the living rock. Further west at Aperlae, partly submerged like Dolichiste, archaeologists have recorded dumps of crushed murex shells covering some 1,600 square metres — the debris of an industry that turned sea snails into purple dye.

A Protected Coast and How to See It

The whole area, roughly 260 square kilometres taking in the island, the two villages and the ancient towns of Simena, Teimiussa, Aperlae and Dolichiste, was declared a Specially Protected Area in January 1990. That status is why the bay looks the way it does: no hotel strips, no marina complexes, and firm limits on what boats may do. Swimming and diving directly over the sunken city are prohibited so that the ruins are not worn away or stripped, and vessels must pass slowly along the protected stretch. Elsewhere in the bay the restrictions are lighter, and several of the nearby coves are open for swimming.

Reaching the site is only practical by water, and many gulet cruises from Kekova call in here on half-day or full-day itineraries that also take in Kaleköy's hilltop castle and the quiet coves nearby. Boats leave from Üçağız, from Kaş and from Demre, and sea kayaks work the same stretch at a slower pace. The best light for looking down through the water is usually early in the morning, before the day's traffic has stirred the surface and while the shadows still fall away from the shore.