The Titus Tunnel is what most people come to Çevlik for, on the coast of the Samandağ district of Hatay. It was cut to solve a practical problem: floodwater coming down off the mountains threatened the port city of Seleucia Pieria below, and the emperor Vespasian ordered a tunnel that would carry the streams around the city and divert them. His son and successor Titus finished the work, which was done by Roman legionaries and slaves.
The channel is cut entirely through the rock and runs 1,380 metres, seven metres high and six metres wide. Walking it is the point of the visit: this is engineering at a scale that reads immediately, without needing a reconstruction drawing to understand.
About a hundred metres to the right of the tunnel's seaward entrance is the Beşikli Cave, among the largest and best known rock tombs of the area, holding twelve graves in separate compartments divided from one another by walls. Stone columns and arches link the compartments, and stone stairs lead down into them. Doorways open here and there between the rock-cut sections, with columns, capitals, steps and motifs partly decorating the covering above.
Çevlik is five kilometres from Samandağ, served by minibuses from the town and signposted for drivers; the address is Kapısuyu, 31800 Samandağ. Seleucia Pieria, the ancient harbour city the tunnel was built to protect, can be seen on the same visit.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Hatay as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 8.1 °C in January to 27.9 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in April, May, June and October; rainfall is heaviest in January (197 mm) and lightest in July (16 mm). Long-term means for 1940-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
Visiting hours
- Hours
- 08:00 - 19:00
