Xanthos Antik Kenti

About Xanthos Antik Kenti

Xanthos (Ksanthos), near Kınık in Kaş district and about 4 km from Letoon, was the capital of ancient Lycia and its largest administrative centre. Lycian inscriptions call it Arnna. The city stands on two hills overlooking the plain. Together with Letoon it was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1988. Homer says that the people of Xanthos, led by Sarpedon, fought in the Trojan War, but the excavated finds do not take settlement back before the 8th century BC. In 545 or 546 BC the Persian commander Harpagos besieged the city; when the defenders could hold out no longer they killed their women and children and set the city alight, leaving Harpagos an empty ruin. The city burned again between 475 and 450 BC, and Alexander the Great took it in 334 BC. It later came under the Ptolemies and Antiochus III, became capital of the Lycian League in the 2nd century BC, was razed by Brutus in 42 BC and rebuilt with the help of Mark Antony. Most of the surviving Roman buildings, including an arch dedicated to Vespasian, date from the 1st century AD. Xanthos was a bishopric in the Byzantine period, declined after the Arab raids of the 7th century, and was rediscovered in 1838 by Charles Fellows, who took some of its monuments to London. Each hill has its own acropolis, the Lycian and the Roman, both ringed by walls. North of the Lycian acropolis is the Roman theatre, and to its west are the most striking remains: the pillar on which the Harpy Tomb of the 5th century BC stood (the original reliefs are in the British Museum) and a 4th-century pillar sarcophagus beside it. The square Roman agora next to the theatre was lined with shops on three sides, and at its northeast corner rises the Inscribed Pillar, whose text is the longest known inscription in the Lycian language and tells the deeds of a Xanthian prince, Kherei. On the Roman acropolis are many rock tombs and pillar tombs. Only the bases remain of the Lion Tomb and the Payava and Merehi sarcophagi, and of the 4th-century Nereid Monument, all now in the British Museum. The Culture Portal notes that the site can be reached on Kaş to Fethiye buses.