Stratonikeia Archaeological Site

Stratonikeia lies within the village of Eskihisar, some six or seven kilometres west of Yatağan in Muğla province, on the Yatağan to Milas road. The ancient writers Herodotus, Strabo, Pausanias and Stephanus of Byzantium tell of an earlier settlement here known as Khrysaoris or Idrias. In 281 BC the Seleucid king Antiochus I renamed the city after Stratonike, first his stepmother and then his wife.

The city changed hands between the Seleucids, Ptolemies, Macedonians, Rhodes and Rome, and it stayed important all through the Roman imperial period, when it saw continuous building. The Early Empire and the 2nd century AD were its greatest building phases, and construction continued in Byzantine times. Coins found in excavations show that Stratonikeia struck its own money from 167 BC, after gaining independence from Rhodes, and that it continued under Gallienus.

After the Turkic conquest of Anatolia at the end of the 11th century the city was settled again, and people lived here through the 14th and 15th centuries and beyond. Eskihisar village has now moved entirely to a new settlement, but some families still live in old village houses inside the ancient city, so the ruins and daily life sit side by side. The acropolis crowns the mountain to the south and is ringed by a wall.