Xanthos Archaeological Site

Xanthos was built on two hills that dominate the plain beside today's Eşen river. The two hills carry the Lycian and Roman acropoleis. According to Herodotus, when the Persians came in the mid-sixth century BC the people of Xanthos fought to the death rather than surrender, an act of resistance that has become part of the city's identity. A great fire hit the city between 475 and 450 BC. In the second century BC it was the capital of the Lycian League, it came under Roman control in 42 BC, and it remained a bishopric under the Byzantines until the Arab raids of the seventh century.

UNESCO inscribed Xanthos and the nearby sanctuary of Letoon on its World Heritage List in 1988. Xanthos is especially known for monumental tombs. The Inscribed Pillar, about four metres tall, carries the longest surviving Lycian inscription. The Harpy Monument, its reliefs of human and winged figures now in England, along with the Nereid Monument and the Lion Tomb, were removed by ship in the nineteenth century, so much of Xanthos's art is now in London.

On site you can still see the Roman theatre, the Vespasian Arch, which stood at the city's southern entrance, and city walls dating back to the fifth century BC. On the acropolis are a palace, a building believed to be a temple of Artemis and the ruins of a Byzantine monastery. A water system still used for irrigation runs through the city, fed from the spring at İnpınarı, the eye of the water, some kilometres away.