Kaş is a harbour town on the Lycian shore of Antalya, and the ancient city of Antiphellos is spread through its streets and along the peninsula beside it: a theatre looking out to sea, rock tombs, and a sarcophagus with lions on its lid that the town has taken as its emblem. On the mountainside above stands Phellos, the inland city whose port this once was. West along the coast lie the white sand of Kaputaş, the two great Lycian capitals of Xanthos and Patara, and the long Patara dunes; east, on the road to Demre, the islands and sunken shores of Kekova with Kaleköy and Üçağız beside them. The water in between, from Kaş towards Fethiye, has been a marine national park since August 2026.
Antiphellos, the ancient town under Kaş
In Lycian the place was called Habesos or Habesa; the Greek name Antiphellos means the town facing Phellos, the stony country, because it began as that hill city's harbour. People have lived here since the sixth century BC, and it belonged to the Lycian League. In Hellenistic times trade turned the relationship around: the port flourished while its mother city faded, and under Rome it stayed an important harbour. Coins struck from the mid-second century BC onward, some in its own name and some for the league, show it as a merchant city, although it held only one vote in the league.
Start with the theatre at the southern foot of the acropolis hill. It has twenty-six rows of seats turned towards the sea, split by four stairways into three blocks; there is no diazoma and no stone stage building, and it is thought to be Hellenistic. A short way north-east, a tomb chamber cut into the rock is carved with twenty-four reliefs of women and goes back to the fourth century BC. Along the peninsula, Hellenistic wall foundations show at its root and on the side facing Meis, and above the harbour, south-east of the old church now used as a mosque, are the remains of a temple within its temenos, its god unknown. In the middle of town, on Uzun Çarşı Caddesi, is the monument everyone photographs: a finely proportioned sarcophagus with a Lycian inscription and lions' heads at the corners of its lid.
Phellos, up on Felen Dağı
North-east of Kaş, on a slope of Felen Dağı with wide views over the mountains, Phellos was the leading city of the area in the fourth century BC; in the Hellenistic period it gave way to Antiphellos, the harbour it had founded. Its Lycian name was Vehinda. Little of the town survives beyond its defences: an acropolis roughly 550 by 200 metres, ringed by limestone walls, partly polygonal, with towers in rectangular masonry on the east and south. On the western edge is a rock tomb in the form of a Lycian timber house. The site's best piece lies among the many sarcophagi in the valley north of the acropolis: a three-part limestone sarcophagus of 385–350 BC on which the owner reclines on a couch, cup in hand, with warriors on the short ends and griffins facing each other on the lid. In 2009 Phellos was among the Lycian sites proposed for World Heritage status as the Ancient Cities of the Lycian Civilisation.
Kaputaş and the sea
Kaputaş lies 18 km west of Kaş, reachable by dolmuş or car. You go down several hundred steps to a beach of bright, fine white sand above very clear turquoise water, where Kaş Municipality runs a facility for visitors.
Out at sea, the whole stretch between Fethiye and Kaş has been a national park, 2,170,603 hectares in extent, since a decision published on 16 August 2026 in the Official Gazette. Together with the Northern Aegean Marine National Park it was one of the two marine national parks Türkiye declared first.
Kekova, Simena and Üçağız
Kekova is the name of a whole area, not of a single town or ruin. Its largest island, also called Kekova, lies along the shore and forms a channel, and the smaller islands around it, Toprak Ada, İç Ada, Kişnali Ada and Aşırlı Ada, are scattered among a great many bays. Lycian remains are everywhere, many of them half drowned: sarcophagi standing in the water at the shoreline, a breakwater, building foundations and tombs with Lycian inscriptions. All of it lies inside the Kaş-Kekova special environmental protection area, and since 2000 it has also been a candidate on UNESCO's tentative list. Few roads reach it, so you see the shores from a boat.
Facing Kekova island on its peninsula between Kaş and Demre, Simena, today Kaleköy, is one of the few places in Türkiye you arrive at by sea. Ancient earthquakes sank part of it, so steps lead into the water and sarcophagi stand along the shore near a ruined Roman bath. A steep path with steps climbs between village houses and tombs to the medieval castle, where a little rock-cut theatre of seven rows held about three hundred people. Theimiussa, at Üçağız, is reached by turning south off the Kaş-Demre road at kilometre twenty; east of the jetty you find house-type rock tombs, one inscribed in Lycian for its owner Kluwanimi, and a long line of Late Hellenistic and Roman sarcophagi.
West: Xanthos, Patara and the beach
Xanthos, at the village of Kınık in Kaş district, was the capital of Lycia and is on the UNESCO World Heritage List. It occupies two hills over the plain: the walled Lycian acropolis on a steep crag above the Eşen stream, and the larger Roman acropolis to the north. Homer's Iliad brings the Lycian leaders Glaucus and Sarpedon from the land of the river Xanthos. The city stayed independent until the Persians under Harpagus took it around 545 BC, it was burned and rebuilt again and again, and in 168 BC it became the capital of the Lycian League. Look for the pillar tombs peculiar to Lycia, alongside rock-cut and sarcophagus tombs, the much-repaired theatre and an Early Christian church. Charles Fellows explored the site in 1838 and in the 1840s shipped the Nereid Monument and much else to the British Museum; French archaeologists resumed work in 1950.
Patara, named Patar in Hittite texts of the thirteenth century BC, survived because it was the one place in the Xanthos valley open to the sea. It served as capital of the Lycian League and kept that role after AD 43, when Lycia was made a Roman province. Saint Nicholas was born here, and Paul is said to have sailed from Patara for Rome. You walk in through a well-preserved triumphal arch of around AD 100, with Lycian sarcophagi in the necropolis to its west; to the south the theatre rests against Kurşunlu Tepe, the best spot for a view over the whole site, and north of it is the council house where the league met. Hadrian and Sabina built the granary. Excavation has gone on since 1988, and the Lycian Way runs close by.
Right beside the ruins, Patara beach runs for eighteen kilometres; the Antalya directorate of culture and tourism calls it the widest and longest in Türkiye, up to 800 metres across, and it stretches towards Gelemiş. It is a Specially Protected Environment Area and a nesting beach for loggerhead turtles (Caretta caretta) and green turtles (Chelonia mydas), whose nests lie between the mouth of the Eşen Çayı and the hills where the sand ends in the east.
