Mira Audio Guide

Welcome to Myra, a Lycian city set on the river Myros, in the fertile plain of Demre between the mountains and the sea. Above the greenery, the whole cliff face has been carved into tombs — a city of the dead looking down on a city of the living. Myra belonged to the Lycian League, the alliance of cities that governed this coast, from 168 BC. The Greek geographer Strabo counted it among the largest towns of that alliance. In the early Roman Empire perhaps some five thousand people lived here, and it was still considered a metropolis. Below the cliffs lay theatres, baths and a harbour; above them rise two great necropoleis. One is the river necropolis, upstream along the Myros. The other, the ocean necropolis, stands just northwest of the theatre. Both were cut as temple fronts and house fronts into the vertical rock.

Rab Lawrence · CC BY 2.0

These carved faces once crowned the wall behind the theatre's stage. They come from the scaenae frons, the tall decorated facade that formed the backdrop for every performance. The block shows theatrical masks alternating with scrolling foliage and architectural ornament. Some faces gape wide open, others keep calm, closed expressions — the visual language of comedy and of drama. Set on a stage wall, the masks announced the building's purpose to everyone who entered. Each one was carved deep, so that shadow gave it expression even from far away. The blocks now lie fallen and separated, but the chisel work is still sharp. It is sharp enough to show every wrinkle and fold the stonecutters gave these faces.

Photo: Elelicht · CC BY 3.0

Beside the masks, a very different face keeps watch over the theatre. This Medusa is carved in deep relief, with snakes twisting through her hair and wings spreading at her temples. In Greco-Roman decoration, a Medusa head was an apotropaic device — a face meant to turn away harm. The wide eyes and open mouth were there to frighten off evil, not the audience. The stonecutters gave her curling locks and a fierce, unblinking stare, and the work has survived remarkably well. Somewhere in the theatre's architecture, she stood guard over everyone gathered here. Her exact original position in the architecture remains uncertain.

Carole Raddato from FRANKFURT, Germany · CC BY-SA 2.0

These stairways and massive walls are the machinery beneath the seats. Roman builders gave the theatre vaulted substructures: barrel-vaulted corridors and stairways called vomitoria, which channeled spectators up into the rows. People entered at ground level, split into passages, and climbed directly to their places, so large crowds reached their seats without crossing each other's paths. The original theatre here was Hellenistic, built against the hillside in the Greek manner. The Roman rebuilding replaced that arrangement with this engineered understructure of stone vaults. The great ashlar blocks are fitted close together, and the passages stay cool even in the summer heat. Out of these dim corridors, the audience stepped straight into full daylight and the view of the stage.

Photo: Interfase · CC BY-SA 4.0

The great semicircle of seats sits against the cliff, with the rocky precipice rising right behind it. This theatre was destroyed by an earthquake in the year 141, and rebuilt afterward on a grand Roman scale. That rebuilding was a major civic project of its age, and it made the theatre the centerpiece of the lower city. Above the highest rows, the cliff still carries the Lycian rock tombs — the dead of Myra kept their place over the stage. Near the theatre stand remains of Roman baths and later buildings, partly cleared from the ground. Much of the ancient city still lies buried under alluvial silt washed down from the mountains. The acropolis on the mountain above the theatre is largely destroyed. What was raised after the earthquake is what survives on the site.

Photo: Elelicht · CC BY 3.0

Fallen blocks and column drums lie scattered at the foot of the seats. The flat semicircle beyond them is the orchestra, where chorus, musicians and actors performed in front of the stage building. The tall scaenae frons served as their backdrop, and this whole building was designed for spectacles. Digging here is recent work: systematic excavations at Myra and its harbour began in 2009, led by the archaeologist Nevzat Çevik. In February 2021 his team from Akdeniz University announced a striking find. Dozens of terracotta figurines came to light, about 2,200 years old, with their paint partly preserved. They show men, women, cavalry, animals and Greek deities, and some carry the names of artists. With them came other finds from the Hellenistic theatre, made of ceramic, bronze, lead and silver. These finds belong to the theatre's earliest phase, before the Roman rebuilding. Whether the figurines were deposited ritually or simply thrown away, the excavators cannot yet say.

Photo: Dosseman · CC BY-SA 4.0

The high tiers of the theatre look out over the silted plain toward the sea. Myra's harbour lay at Andriake, down the river — not a separate city, but Myra's port and outer quarter. To guard against pirate raids, the citizens stretched a chain across the river mouth. In 42 BC a commander named Lentulus Spinther, sent by Brutus to squeeze money out of Myra, broke that chain and entered the harbour. Around the year 60, another ship put in here with a famous passenger. Paul the Apostle, traveling as a prisoner under a Roman centurion, changed ships at Myra on his way from Caesarea to Rome for trial. He arrived on a coastal trading vessel and continued on a ship secured for the crossing. Later, the emperor Hadrian built a granary at Andriake with seven great halls. It runs fifty-six meters long, and it still stands as the harbour's monument. Over the centuries the river kept carrying silt down from the mountains, until the harbour choked and the sea retreated. It is what makes the plain so flat and green now.

Jean-Marc Astesana from Voisins le Bretonneux, France · CC BY-SA 2.0

High on the cliff northwest of the theatre, the leading families of Myra were laid to rest in the best view in town. The Lycians carved their elite tombs into the vertical rock, high above the settlement, where every facade stays in sight. The tombs imitate houses and temples — dwellings for the dead, cut into living rock. The story goes that winged beings carried the souls of the dead up to the afterlife, an old Lycian account of why the tombs stand so high. Whatever the precise reason, the effect is unmistakable: a cemetery turned into a monument, visible from the fields, the river and the sea. From below, the carved fronts read like a hillside of houses with their doors shut fast.

Photo: Aerdemsenturk · CC BY-SA 4.0

Up close, one tomb shows exactly how the masons worked. This facade copies a house front: a triangular pediment on top, and below it the ends of roof beams and a framed doorway, all cut from the living rock. Lycian houses were built of timber, and the stone reproduces that construction piece by piece — beam ends, lintels, framing. Above the door runs an inscription in the Lycian language, carved for whoever owned the tomb. Such texts mark the tombs as property of named people. The full reading of this inscription, and the name of its owner, remain uncertain. What is certain is the craft: a wooden building translated permanently into rock.

Photo: Dosseman · CC BY-SA 4.0

Some of the tombs carry figures as well as architecture. In the pediment of this one, human figures stand inside a framed panel, carved in relief. Figural tomb reliefs at Myra are attested from the fourth century BC. Scenes like this generally evoke the person the tomb honored and the world they lived in. What exactly these figures are doing — daily life, a ritual, a farewell — no one can say for certain. The carving is worn, but the outlines of bodies and gestures still read clearly. The dead of this cliff were remembered with images, not only with words.

Photo: Interfase · CC BY-SA 4.0