Guide
Anavarza lies in the village of Dilekkaya, 28 kilometres south of the town of Kozan in Adana. In the 1st century BC the Romans left the administration of this region to Tarkondimotos, whom they appointed as a vassal king. After the city came under direct Roman rule in 17 BC it grew into one of the most important metropolises of Anatolia.
What survives is a full city rather than a single monument: a colonnaded street, baths, the remains of a church, a theatre, an amphitheatre, a stadium, water channels, rock tombs, the cemetery and ancient road on the west side, a pool mosaic of the sea goddess Thetis, a triumphal arch with three openings, and the medieval castle on the hill that rises out of the plain like an island.
Two names attach to the place. Dioscorides, who served in the Roman army under Nero and whose five-volume De Materia Medica was still taught as a foundational text in the medical faculties of every modern country into the 18th century, lived at Anavarza. The poet Oppian was born and lived here too. Ancient sources also record that the city held a great many linen weaving workshops.
Carrying traces of the Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, medieval, Arab, Armenian and Ottoman periods, Anavarza has been put forward as world heritage and was entered on the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List in 2014. It is reached on the vehicles running from Kozan to Dilekkaya; the address is Dilekkaya Mahallesi, 01500 Kozan.
