Lagina Archaeological Site

Lagina was the leading cult centre of Hekate in ancient Caria, set in the hills above the Yatağan plain in the province of Muğla. The goddess's fame was so lasting that the district is still called Leyne, and recent research shows that people have lived around here without interruption since the Early Bronze Age.

The sanctuary took its monumental form under the Seleucid kings, who also made nearby Stratonikeia, some eleven kilometres away, the political centre of the region. Inscriptions preserved in both places tell us that a sacred road tied the two cities together, so a visit here is really half of a larger story.

On the ground you can make out the monumental gateway, the sacred way, the altar, the enclosing precinct wall and the Doric stoas, all arranged around the Hekate temple in the middle. The temple was a Corinthian building on a pseudo-dipteral plan, and stretches of the boundary wall still rise to about two metres. The digs here were also the first in Turkey led by Turkish scholars, which gives the place a second claim to fame.