Andriake, the port city
of Myra, can be found in Çayagzi, some five minutes from Myra.
Although it is known as the port city of Myra, it was actually
a separate city near Myra. In 197 B.C., Antiochus III and his
fleet conquered the areas under the control of Ptolemies on
the Anatolian coast and reached Andriake. The Emperor Trajan,
when he was
staying in Myra,
said that this port should have been better laid out, but
this didn’t happen until his successor Hadrian’s time. Andriake’s
ruins are on the foot of a hill near Demre. The first noticeable
features of the ruins are the aqueducts that transported water
to the city.
The remains of an elaborate structure at
the port entrance are a part of a Roman fountain that has
survived to our day. The largest structure of these ruins
is an agora called Plakoma. Three sides of this agora are
surrounded by shops, and there is a water tank in the center.
On the western side of this agora, there is a cereal storage
area formed by seven chambers. The sides of this storage granary
(granarium) are 65 by 32 meters. All the rooms are interconnected
with rooms on their walls. There are also lookout rooms next
to them. The front facade of this structure is built with
regular stones. The inner and back walls are made in a polygonal
style.
Judging from the inscriptions on top of the door and the relief
of Hadrian and his wife Faustina in the center, we can deduce
that the building was built in 129 A.D.
The granary is decorated with reliefs depicting a dream of
a civil servant named Harakleon who worked here in the fifth
century A.D.
In front of the granary, there are remains of houses, the
port avenue and ship shelters whose tops are half open. There
is a watchtower on the western side of the port. On the north,
there is a necropolis area where there are Lycian-style sarcophagi
from Roman times.