Fethiye: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
Fethiye is the ancient Lycian town of Telmessos, and its cliffs are cut with temple-fronted tombs that look down on a modern town. Earthquakes in 1856 and 1957 flattened most of it, so what stands is new, and the ancient stones appear between the shops. It was renamed in 1934 after Fethi Bey, one of the first Ottoman military pilots, killed in a crash in 1914. Ninety minutes; the climb to the tombs at sunset.
A short history of Fethiye
Fethiye stands on the site of ancient Telmessos, a Lycian city that left rock-cut tombs in the cliff above the town. The largest of them, the Tomb of Amyntas, was carved in the 4th century BC in the form of a temple façade. For centuries the town was called Makri. Earthquakes in 1856 and 1957 destroyed most of it. In 1934 it received its present name in memory of Fethi Bey, one of the first pilots of the Ottoman army, who was killed in a crash in 1914. Greeks lived in the nearby village of Kayaköy until the population exchange of 1923, and its houses have stood abandoned ever since.
The ten best sights in Fethiye
1Tomb of AmyntasA temple-fronted tomb carved into the cliff; climb at sunset
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2Fethiye Museum
Lycian finds and the trilingual stele from Letoon
3Fethiye CastleRuins of the Knights’ castle over the town
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4Telmessos Theatre
The Roman theatre by the harbour
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5Çalış Beach
A long beach facing the sunset
6KayaköyA Greek ghost town of five hundred empty houses
7Gemiler IslandByzantine churches on an island; by boat
8ÖlüdenizThe beach where paragliders land
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9Blue Lagoon
A sheltered lagoon in a nature park; go early
10BabadağThe mountain of the paragliders; cable car to the top
Scan with your phone camera to open the map there
What is an audio walk?
Tours in Fethiye →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Fethiye:
Free walking tours in Fethiye
Telmessos under the tombs
Fethiye is the ancient Lycian town of Telmessos, and its cliffs are cut with temple-fronted tombs that look down on a modern town. Earthquakes in 1856 and 1957 flattened most of it, so what stands is new, and the ancient stones appear between the shops. It was renamed in 1934 after Fethi Bey, one of the first Ottoman military pilots, killed in a crash in 1914. Ninety minutes; the climb to the tombs at sunset.
- Telmessos Theatre · A Roman theatre for about six thousand people, facing the harbour, that lay buried under the town until it was excavated in recent decades. Below it the yachts and day boats leave for the twelve islands of the gulf.
- Paspatur · The old bazaar of lanes shaded by vines, a few blocks that survived the earthquake of 1957, now full of carpet shops, cafés and bars. Every Tuesday the town holds one of the largest open-air markets of the coast by the canal.
- Fish Market · A round hall of fishmongers in the middle of a ring of restaurants: you choose a fish on the ice, pay by weight, and carry it to any restaurant around, which grills it and serves it with salads and bread for a small fee.
- Fethiye Castle · The ruined walls on the hill are said to be the work of the Knights of St John of Rhodes in the fifteenth century, on older foundations going back to the Lycians. From the top the whole gulf and its islands spread out.
- Tomb of Amyntas · The Lycians buried their dead in houses for the afterlife carved in the cliffs, and this one, of the fourth century BC, has a façade of an Ionic temple with two columns. An inscription gives the name: Amyntas, son of Hermapias. Grave robbers broke the stone door long ago.
- Fethiye Museum · The museum keeps finds from the Lycian cities of the valley, and among them a stone stele from the Letoon carved in 358 BC in three languages — Greek, Lycian and Aramaic. Like the Rosetta Stone, it helped scholars read the Lycian language.
The ghost town and the lagoon
Over the hill from Fethiye are a Greek town emptied in 1923, a Byzantine island, and the famous lagoon of Ölüdeniz under a mountain from which paragliders drop two thousand metres to the beach. A full day by car, bus or boat; the Lycian Way begins here.
- Kayaköy · Until 1923 this was Levissi, a Greek Orthodox town of several thousand people. In the exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey that year its people were sent to Greece, and Muslims sent from Greece would not settle in the stone houses on the hill. About five hundred roofless houses and two churches still stand, the setting of Louis de Bernières’s novel Birds Without Wings.
- Gemiler Island · A small island covered with the ruins of Byzantine churches of the fourth to seventh centuries, linked by a long covered processional walkway. Some scholars think it was the first burial place of Saint Nicholas, before his body was moved to Myra.
- Blue Lagoon · A shallow lagoon behind a spit of white pebbles, turquoise and still while the open sea is rough, protected as a nature park so no hotels stand on its shore. It is the picture on almost every Turkish travel poster of the coast.
- Babadağ · The mountain rises nearly two thousand metres straight behind the beach, and its steady winds make it one of the best paragliding sites in the world. Tandem pilots take passengers off the top for a flight of half an hour down to the sand; a cable car now climbs it.
- Butterfly Valley · A beach at the mouth of a gorge between cliffs about three hundred and fifty metres high, reached by boat from Ölüdeniz or by a steep path from the village above. In summer the valley fills with Jersey tiger moths, and it is protected.
- Faralya · A village on the cliff edge above Butterfly Valley, on the Lycian Way, a trail of over five hundred kilometres along the coast to Antalya, marked in 1999 by a British walker, Kate Clow, using the old paths between the ancient cities.
The cities of the Lycians
The Xanthos valley east of Fethiye was the heart of Lycia, a federation of free cities that kept its own language and its own democratic league under Persians, Greeks and Romans. The day passes a canyon, a mountain city, the capital, a sanctuary, and the birthplace of Saint Nicholas on a great beach. A full day and a car; the canyon water is icy.
- Tlos · One of the oldest Lycian cities, on a rock over the valley, its cliff full of tombs. On one of them is carved Bellerophon riding Pegasus, the winged horse — the Lycians claimed the hero as their own. An Ottoman fortress of a local warlord stands on the acropolis.
- Yaka Park · A restaurant built around mountain springs, where channels of cold water run between and under the tables and the trout are raised in pools beside them. Visitors drink with their bottles cooling in the stream.
- Saklıkent · The name means hidden city: a canyon about eighteen kilometres long and up to three hundred metres deep, so narrow in places that the sky is a strip. Visitors wade in through ice-cold spring water and mud for the first few kilometres.
- Xanthos · The capital of Lycia. Herodotus wrote that when the Persians besieged it around 540 BC its men burned their wives, children and treasure in the citadel and died fighting, and Plutarch tells that it happened again when Brutus took the city in 42 BC. Its finest monuments were taken to the British Museum in the nineteenth century.
- Letoon · The religious centre of Lycia, with temples of Leto and her twins Apollo and Artemis. The legend says Leto came here fleeing Hera, and when local peasants refused her a drink from the spring, she turned them into frogs — and the pools in the ruins are still full of frogs.
- Patara · Saint Nicholas, the model for Santa Claus, was born here in the third century. The city’s restored council house was the parliament of the Lycian League, where cities voted with one, two or three votes according to their size — a system that the authors of the American constitution cited as a model.
Getting to Fethiye and getting around
- Dalaman Airport · About forty-five minutes by road
Cheap eats in Fethiye
The Turkish Mediterranean eats fish, mezze and pastry. Gözleme — thin dough rolled by village women and filled with cheese, spinach or potato, cooked on a domed griddle — is the snack of every roadside stop. The fish market grills sea bream and sea bass by the plate; köfte and pide fill the lunch places; breakfast is olives, cheese, tomatoes, honey and bread. Gözleme with ayran costs a few euro.
- Fish Market · Choose a fish, have it grilled next door
- Paspatur · The Tuesday market and gözleme
- Yaka Park · Trout over running water
- Kayaköy · Village gözleme among the ruins
- Faralya · A Turkish breakfast on the cliff
- Çalış Beach · Ice cream and fish at sunset
Museums in Fethiye
The Lycians left a coast full of cities and tombs, and the region is an open-air museum of them; Fethiye’s museum holds the stone that helped read their language.
- Fethiye Museum · The trilingual stele
- Xanthos · The capital that chose death twice
- Patara · The Lycian parliament and a Roman road sign
- Tomb of Amyntas · The great rock tomb
- Kayaköy · A town left behind in 1923
Nature and day trips near Fethiye
The coast west of the Taurus mountains is pine forest, cliffs, canyons and long beaches where loggerhead turtles nest. The Lycian Way runs along it for five hundred kilometres.
- İztuzu Beach · The turtle beach
- Saklıkent · The canyon on foot through the water
- Butterfly Valley · A gorge of moths by the sea
- Babadağ · Paragliding off the mountain
- Patara Beach · Eighteen kilometres of dunes and turtles
- Kabak · The bay at the end of the road
Things to do in Fethiye with kids
With children Fethiye is boats and water: the calm lagoon, the twelve-island boat trip, a canyon to wade, and trout in the stream.
- Blue Lagoon · Calm, shallow water
- Gemiler Island · A boat trip to an island of ruins
- Saklıkent · Wade into the canyon
- Yaka Park · Feed the trout
- Çalış Beach · A long sandy beach
- Letoon · Find the frogs of the legend
Holy places in Fethiye
The coast holds the Lycian gods, the early Christianity of Saint Nicholas, the empty churches of the Greeks who left in 1923, and the mosques of the towns today.
- Letoon · The sanctuary of Leto
- Patara · Birthplace of Saint Nicholas
- Gemiler Island · Byzantine pilgrimage churches
- Kayaköy · The empty Greek churches
Nightlife in Fethiye
Fethiye’s nights are in the bars of Paspatur and on the harbour; the big summer party is at Ölüdeniz and Hisarönü above it.
- Paspatur · Bars in the old bazaar
- Ölüdeniz · Beach bars and clubs
- Tomb of Amyntas · Sunset over the gulf from the tombs
- Çalış Beach · Sunset bars on the promenade
Frequently asked questions about Fethiye
What is there to see in Fethiye?
The top sights in Fethiye are Tomb of Amyntas, Fethiye Museum and Fethiye Castle. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Fethiye?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Fethiye without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Fethiye?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Fethiye, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: Telmessos under the tombs.
How do you get to Fethiye and get around?
The main ways are Dalaman Airport. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Fethiye, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Fethiye that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Fethiye for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.