Labraunda Archaeological Site

Labraunda was the most important sanctuary of western Caria, a country in south-western Anatolia whose people spoke their own Indo-European language, closely related to that of their Lycian neighbours. The earliest written mention comes from Herodotus. The cult of Zeus Labraundos, the god of the double axe, is thought to go back to a water source and a great rock just above the temple terrace.

Pilgrims arrived from Mylasa, today's Milas, by a fourteen-kilometre paved Sacred Way about eight metres wide. The oldest finds here date to the 5th century BC. The site's great age came in the 4th and 3rd centuries BC, when Maussollos and his brother Idrieus, satraps of Caria from the Hekatomnid dynasty, made it a family sanctuary.

They built the Temple of Zeus, two large Androns (banqueting halls), the North Stoa, the Oikoi building, the South Propylon and the Doric Building. Very little was added in later centuries, so Labraunda still looks like a genuine Hekatomnid site. Swedish excavations began in 1948 under Uppsala University and continue in the same tradition of careful work.