Marmaris is built around a harbour watched over by a castle on a small peninsula, and since 1991 that castle has held the town's museum, including much of what was found at Knidos. Around the town a national park of red pine covers the Reşadiye peninsula. In the village of Bayır a plane tree put at about 1,900 years old shades a coffee house, and the excursion boats that leave Marmaris tie up in pine-ringed bays such as Çiftlik. In the Gulf of Gökova, Sedir Island keeps the ruins of ancient Kedrai and a beach of rare sand, and the road to Datça passes camping parks before reaching the coves near Knidos.
Marmaris Castle and its museum
The museum in the castle shows a large share of the Knidos finds next to archaeological and ethnographic pieces from the region, and from the walls the whole of Marmaris lies spread out below. Herodotus traces the castle to the third millennium BC and to Physkos, an important port of Caria. Alexander the Great repaired it, and in 1522, before his campaign against Rhodes, Süleyman the Magnificent rebuilt it as a military base. In 1914 French naval guns hit it, people lived inside it into the republican period, and after restoration it became a museum. Beside the entrance is the Hafsa Sultan caravanserai, built in 1545 for the trade and travellers of the day: two storeys on a rectangular plan, with a bath of its own.
The Halıcı Ahmet Urkay Museum
At Taşhan in Çamlı village, thirteen kilometres from the town centre, the businessman Ahmet Urkay opened his private museum in 2005. Its 1,800 square metres of covered space hold 3,500 pieces he collected while travelling, split into an archaeological and an ethnographic part, from ancient column capitals and Ottoman ewers to kilims and carpets, jewellery, tiled stoves and cradles.
The national park and the old trees of Bayır and Söğüt
Marmaris National Park, declared on 30 January 1996, covers 29,206 hectares of the Reşadiye peninsula, wrapping round the town and running south to Bakla Bükü and east to Ekincik Burnu. Red pine makes the forest, but the tree worth seeking out is the oriental sweetgum, endemic to Türkiye, which grows where the soil is deep and damp. In the valleys the pine mixes with alder, plane and oak above bay, oleander, carob, terebinth, wild olive and strawberry tree.
In Bayır, the courtyard at Camiyanı holds the village mosque, the Çınaraltı coffee house and two trees declared natural monuments on 21 February 1995. The plane is 35 metres tall and, by the nature conservation directorate's estimate, about 1,900 years old. The cypress next to it reaches 32 metres, but its trunk has rotted hollow along much of its length, so no one could count its years. What people do here is sit with a coffee under the plane. Söğüt has a monument plane of its own, protected on the same day: around 500 years old, it is much younger than the Bayır tree but thicker, with a trunk three metres across. From Marmaris bus station, lines 10-13 and 10-5 serve both villages.
Bays: Çiftlik, Kumlubük and Ekincik
Çiftlik bay, closed in on every side by pine forest, has clear, sparkling water, and the boat trips out of Marmaris make it one of their main stops; the rocks at either end of the bay are good for diving. By road, the turning comes about 1 kilometre along the asphalt from Bayır towards Söğüt. In the Turunç area, Kumlubük pairs a fine beach with fish restaurants, which the provincial directorate ranks among the region's best for seafood. Further east, Ekincik bay is one of the chief stops for boats cruising between Marmaris and Göcek, with a pier for yachts, restaurants on the beach and the boats that take day passengers on to Dalyan.
Sedir Island
Sedir Island, a Marmaris island in the Gulf of Gökova, is the largest of three islands and was the ancient city of Cedrae, or Kedrai, one of the important cities of Caria, traceable from the sixth century BC. It paid tribute in the Delian League, and in 405 and 406 BC, in the war between Athens and Sparta, the Spartan commander Lysander besieged it and took it for having sided with Athens. Visitors come for the many-towered walls of neat ashlar, Apollo's temple with the church later built in its place, the well-preserved theatre, the agora and the old harbour. The sand on the northern shore, made of calcareous grains that occur in the Aegean and Mediterranean only on this island and on Crete, is protected; a local belief, an uncertain one, holds that it was brought from Egypt for Cleopatra, and some call it Cleopatra's Island. Boats go across from Akyaka or from Çamlı.
On the Datça road: nature parks and the Carian Trail
The road from Marmaris to Datça runs into the Datça-Bozburun special environmental protection region, and three nature parks along it are places to camp or stay. Çubucak, at the 20th kilometre, takes 400 tents and 35 caravans under Turkish pine, myrtle, laurel and sweetgum, with a wooden pier, a shop and a country restaurant; İnbükü, at the 25th kilometre, takes in the two bays of İnbükü and Çökertme; and Kovanlık, at the 44th kilometre in Emecik, is for staying in its bungalows rather than for a day out. The 48-16 bus between Marmaris and Datça stops at the gate of Çubucak and also reaches Kovanlık.
Walkers have the Carian Trail, which covers close to 150 kilometres on the Bozburun Peninsula alone; its Datça section leads from Datça's old town to Balıkaşıran past more than 50 beaches, through country with hardly any villages, so it suits experienced walkers ready to camp. The wildfires of August 2021, which started at İçmeler, burned much of the forest on the peninsula's north side, and the affected routes were shut while it was cleared, so look up the state of each section before you go.
Knidos and the coves of Mesudiye
Knidos, built between Kos and Rhodes, was one of the chief centres of Caria and the second known Doric city after Halicarnassus. A narrow neck of land ties the mainland to the islet of Deveboynu, or Cape Krio, and each of the two bays on either side had its harbour, the western one for warships and the eastern for merchant ships; the city sent its well-known wine abroad. Strabo saw it rising from the shore to the acropolis like a theatre, and it remains a city of terraces on a grid of streets. Seven churches are known on the site, some with mosaic floors, and east of the city stands a well-preserved Hellenistic villa with frescoes. The highest terrace, the Round Temple Terrace, is the one I. C. Love linked with the famous Aphrodite. Expect little of the great theatre by the sanctuary of Demeter: its stones went to build Dolmabahçe Palace and, in Cairo, Mehmet Ali Paşa's palace and mosque.
Close to Knidos, inside Mesudiye village in the Datça district, the coves of Hayıtbük and Kızılbük fit into the same trip. Hayıtbük, counted among the finest coves in Datça, has calm turquoise water, a soft sand beach and restaurants, guesthouses and cafes, and people sail and canoe there. Kızılbük, just to the east and also called Gabaklar beach, is quieter, a place for diving, fishing and walking.
