Another area of ruins on
the Finike-Kas highway is Kyaenai set up on steep rocks on the
road to Yavi village which is 23 kilometers from Kas. If you
have a car, you can drive up to the theater. If not, you can
climb to
the ruins from the village. Kyaenai means “dark blue”
and this place is also called “reverberating rocks” (Çinlayan
Kayalar) because of the sound the wind makes on these rocks.
We don’t know exactly when this city was established, but
some inscriptions here tell us that the city existed as of
the fourth century B.C. Since that time, Kyaenai was always
inhabited.
A wealthy man named Jason from Kyaenai
contributed to the development of 16 Lycian cities,
including his own. Because of this contributions, he
was called “Lycian,” which meant the highest judge of
Lycia. The city developed greatly in the Roman era and
it became the center of episcopacy in Byzantine times.
The city became desolate in the 10th century.
Kyaenai was set up on steep rocks which were as high
as 240 meters. The city was surrounded by a
450-meter-long city wall (rampart).
From the stones that were added later, we can see that
the city wall was also used in the Byzantine period.
Today, there are three doors on the western and northern
parts of this wall. There must be a fourth one on the
south end of the western wall.
There is a theater which has survived to our day located
on the lower southern part of the hill. This theater
is set up on the natural slope of the hill. Between
theater and the acropolis, there is a necropolis. There
are many sarcophagi of differing sizes from Roman times
among the trees. Kyaenai is also called the “City of
the Sarcophagi” because it has the most sarcophagi of
any city in the Lycian region. The ones on the left
are simpler, while the ones on the eastern slope of
the hill are more elaborate and decorated with reliefs.
These sarcophagi with reliefs date back to 350 B.C.
All the other sarcophagi were built in the Roman period.
