Guide
Kadıkalesi stands on a mound in the Kuşadası district of Aydın, overlooking the harbour of Anaia, a coastal settlement of antiquity and the Middle Ages. From that position the castle controlled the Samos strait, which in the past was an important route in Aegean and therefore western Mediterranean trade. Because the location mattered so much, the mound carries building from the pre-protohistoric, eastern Roman and Ottoman periods one on top of another.
Excavation has run here since 2001. A castle built in the 13th century to protect the harbour of Anaia, the structures inside it, and the layers beneath them all cast light on a past reaching back five thousand years. The work has also produced a good deal of evidence for an early Christian church — probably sitting on top of a temple on the ancient city's acropolis — and for its conversion into the seat of a bishop shortly after 1200.
No architectural remains of ancient building survive in the castle itself, but its ancient material does: small sculptural finds, and marble blocks from Classical and Hellenistic capitals to architraves, reused in quantity in the eastern Roman structures. Pottery spanning the protohistoric period to late Roman times shows how many layers the site holds. Among the finds displayed in the Aydın Archaeological Museum is a Hittite figurine that the Ministry describes as extremely important for the archaeology of the region.
