Heraion Teikhos is a Thracian settlement on the İstanbul-Tekirdağ road, ten kilometres from Tekirdağ. Survey and excavation have shown that the site was occupied without interruption from 2000 BC until the end of the thirteenth century AD, which is an unusually long span and the main reason it matters. The stone hand axes and handmade terracotta vessels found here belong to the Bronze and Iron Ages.
The settlement takes the form of a mound, and work on its acropolis has brought to light the cultural layers from the sixth century BC to the first century AD. A large number of colonists from Samos are known to have settled in the city in the eighth century BC. The sling stones found here are weapons from the Persian invasion of the sixth century BC. Black-figure and red-figure vessels and Kerch vases document the city's links with Greece, and particularly with Attica, in the fifth and fourth centuries BC, while bronze arrowheads, stamped amphora handles and Hellenistic coins record its trade with Greece and the Aegean islands as a port city in the Classical and Hellenistic periods. The site is at Karaevlialti, reached by municipal buses from the Tekirdağ bus station.
Getting there
- Access
- The site is at Karaevlialti on the Istanbul-Tekirdag road, served by municipal buses from the Tekirdag bus station.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Tekirdağ as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 4.9 °C in January to 23.9 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May, June, July, August, September and October; rainfall is heaviest in December (79 mm) and lightest in August (15 mm). Long-term means for 1940-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
