Spil Dağı was declared a national park on 22 April 1968 and covers 6,801 hectares south of Manisa. Its highest point is 1,517 metres, and 593 plant species from 81 families have been recorded on it, 78 of them endemic — red pine, black pine, oak and juniper being the dominant trees.
The mountain's name is said to come from Kybele Sipylena, wife of Kronos the god of time and, like the other gods and goddesses, a deity of the fertility of plants, animals and people. The park is 24 kilometres from Manisa and 38 from Bornova in İzmir; the nearest airport, Adnan Menderes, is about 66 kilometres away. It has capacity for 5,000 visitors and 1,000 vehicles.
The park's wildlife inventory lists 82 vertebrates — 6 amphibians, 9 reptiles, 75 birds and 18 mammals — and 110 invertebrate species. Two of its plants carry particular weight: Ferula anatolica, classed as critically endangered and known in Türkiye from just two places, Denizli and Manisa, and the Spil knapweed (Centaurea sipylea), known only from Manisa. Around a thousand semi-wild horses graze the mountain, and the directorate counts them among the park's chief assets. It also describes Spil as ground used by birds of prey during the migration season.
Several old places lie on the mountain's flanks. On its northern foot, about seven kilometres from Manisa at Akpınar on the road to Turgutlu, a relief of Kybele is carved into the rock. On the north-western foot, by the Çaybaşı stream, a grey rock shaped like a woman's head is known as Niobe, the weeping rock. The ruins of Manisa Castle, with an outer and an inner circuit of rubble laced with brick, stand on the northern slopes; its date is unknown, but it is thought to go back to the early thirteenth century. To the east, at 600 metres, Sülüklü Göl is a doline lake about a hundred metres across and no more than a metre or two deep, fed only by rain. In summer the mountain runs ten to thirteen degrees cooler than Manisa and İzmir, which is what draws people up from the cities.
- Designated
- 22.04.1968
Entry fee
- Aegean group 2 · category 1 · Per person
- 75 ₺
Visiting hours
- Visiting hours
- 09:00 - 18:00
When to go
- Climate
- Across Manisa as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 6.7 °C in January to 28.1 °C in July; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in April, May, September and October; rainfall is heaviest in December (137 mm) and lightest in August (9 mm). Long-term means for 1930-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
