Iotape Antik Kenti

About Iotape Antik Kenti

Iotape (Aytap) is a coastal city of ancient Cilicia at kilometre 33 of the Alanya to Gazipaşa highway. According to the Culture Portal of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, it is named after Iotape, wife of King Antiochus IV of Commagene (38 to 72 AD), and it minted its own coins from the reign of Trajan to that of Valerian. The remains date from the Roman and Byzantine periods. A high headland running out into the sea served as the acropolis; it is ringed by walls and looks like a castle, though its buildings are badly damaged. In the small valley where the headland joins the land ran the harbour street, east to west, much of which now lies under the modern highway. Three-stepped platforms lined both sides of the ancient street, and statue bases along it carry inscriptions about the city's successful and generous citizens. In the cove east of the acropolis are a rectangular basilica and a small single-aisled church attributed to Hagios Georgios Stratelates because of an inscribed fresco inside, as well as the remains of a bath similar in plan to others in the region; the water and drainage system of the bath and city can still be seen. On the seaward side is a temple thought, from an inscription nearby, to have been dedicated to Trajan, now surviving only to the level of its stylobate. North of the modern road are houses, stretches of wall and the necropolis, whose monumental and simple graves are good examples of local tomb architecture and burial customs. The Culture Portal says the site can be reached on Alanya to Gazipaşa buses.