TRAVEL | FETHIYE TOMBS | TURKEY | MEDITERRANEAN | HISTORY

Ancient Tombs Along the Mediterranean Sea

A journey to the Fethiye Tombs

Fethiye lies on the southern coast of Turkey along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. It has a very protected bay and inlet in front of it, and is flanked by high mountains around its city perimeter. Like most of Turkeys coastline, it is a spectacular place!

The major attraction to see in Fethiye is the Fethiye Tombs or Tombs of Amyntas. Apparently, these tombs were built into the cliffside in order to get the deceased higher up, and therefore closer to the heavens, where it was believed that they would be carried off easier into the afterlife.

The first and largest tomb was built in 350 BC by the Lycians, a group of people that lived in this section of the Persian Empire. It’s interesting to note that in researching the tombs, there isn’t very much information available about them. Wikipedia has a scant article, and so does Atlas Obscura.

I guess little is known about these ancient tombs.

We first noticed them on the evening that we arrived in January 2023. We were walking around the city in the dark and could see the faint shape of something on a nearby hillside that looked like it could have been part of the Acropolis in Athens. I had read about the tombs on the bus ride over and was thrilled that they were so close to our guesthouse.

The next morning we could also see them from our kitchen balcony. They looked incredible even from a distance and we looked forward to exploring them further.

As we wandered our way up through ancient narrow streets and old houses towards the mountainside, we noticed that many of the houses featured some sort of stove pipe coming out the sides of them. The large one halfway up the block in the below photo really caught our eye. I mean, how could we miss it?

Some of the houses looked pretty rough and rugged. I’m not sure when they were built but I assume that it was a while ago now.

It only took us about 15 minutes to walk to the bottom of the hillside where most of the tombs reside, but before even paying for an entrance ticket we were gobsmacked by what we saw.

It amazes me how these ancient civilizations were able to carve their way into solid stone, but that is just what they did with these. To top it off the attention to detail is remarkable!

Sadly, we could already see that these tombs had all been raided as made evident by the gaping holes in their fronts.

We made our way to the ticket kiosk and paid the ridiculously cheap price of just 20 Lira ($1 USD) to gain entrance. We have noticed that the attractions that we have visited in Turkey so far have been very affordable.

The trail from the ticket office leads straight to a set of stairs. This is the main thoroughfare to get to the highest and most prominent tomb, so we decided to get all of the uphill climbing out of the way and headed up there first.

In the photo above, the man in blue is standing in front of the door and the part that was smashed in to gain entrance to the inside. It boggles my mind how people simply go ahead and pillage these ancient structures.

And how do they get away with it? Surely people heard somebody trying to break stone to get inside.

As we marveled at the structure, and how it was incredibly carved, I couldn’t help but think of spectacles like Petra. I have never been there, but I can surely imagine that this is but a tiny version of that.

Turning around from inspecting the tomb, we were met with an absolutely stunning view of Fethiye, the bay, the mountains, and the many islands that grace the inlet.

If you are not into ancient history, surely this climb is worth it just for the view.

I put my iPhone in panoramic mode and captured the view from left to right while we were sitting on the giant steps of the tomb.

After taking it all in while enjoying the mild temperatures of the day, we made our way back down the hillside and over to what looked to be the second-largest tomb.

As we got closer to it, the sun broke through a cloud and lit it up beautifully. It almost felt like it was beckoning us inside.

However, despite seeing others climbing the rocks to get to it, we came across a sign that said otherwise. We decided to respect the park's wishes, and didn’t really fancy scrambling up the rocks to get there anyways.

We were happy viewing it from below.

We didn’t want the ancient spirits to cast a spell on us after all. Ha!

After rounding the corner of that cliff, we could see that there were more tombs to explore. It was here that we came across a whole complex of them.

These ones were a little closer to the ground. Chris was curious to look in them so he managed to climb up the short distance to do so. He reported back that there wasn’t much to see so I maintained my position as photographer below.

You can see that some of the ground in the shady area was covered in moss, and I couldn’t help but photograph a few other flowers that we found growing in the park.

The bees were buzzing!

As we made our way back down to the bottom, I just had to stop and photograph the hillside in front of the biggest tomb. It was an absolute carpet of white and yellow with all of the tiny flowers that were on it.

Wandering our way back through the streets and on to our next adventure, we couldn’t help but look back up. It struck me how cool it is that these residents live with these tombs right in their backyards.

We were so happy to have had the chance to see these tombs on that day, because shortly after we returned to our guesthouse, Chris came down with a very painful bout of gout. As it got worse over the next few days, before we finally got him some medication, we never did have a chance to get out and explore the area again.

But Fethiye isn’t going anywhere, and I’m quite certain that if we find ourselves in this area again, this will be one spot that we will be happy to return to.

To read more about our various times spent in Turkey:

To view some other tombs that we saw in Sudan:

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