Theimiussa Antik Kenti

The ancient city of Theimiussa, today known as Üçağız Village, is reached by the road turning south from the 20th kilometre of the Kaş-Demre highway. The ruins are on the eastern side where the village houses begin to thin out. As learned from an inscription found there, Theimiussa was not administratively a city but a village settlement.

Servet Uygun

The fact that funerary inscriptions state that penalties for violent crimes were to be paid to Myra or Kyaneai shows that it was a maritime unit dependent on these cities. The first ruin is a miniature fortress right on the shore, with bossaged, rectangular walls. This fortress, perhaps with an earlier wall as well, was enlarged in diameter in the Byzantine Age and given a form surrounding the city.

Servet Uygun

At the point where the city formed a border with Tybersissos, an acropolis again with walls built in bossaged and rectangular technique must have been considered together with Tybersissos as the last place to be defended. Proceeding east from the pier, a pair of rock tombs in the form of a house, with the entrance door destroyed, is encountered a little inland from the shore. Beside the tomb on the eastern side, a standing figure of a young man or child is seen. On the upper part of the door there is also an inscription in the Lycian language stating that the tomb owner was Kluwanimi. To the east of the tomb building, numerous sarcophagi from the Late Hellenistic and Roman Age are lined up around a channel with cut-stone walls on both sides. The end point of this channel, that is, its northern end, terminates with an Early Byzantine Period structure whose purpose is not known for certain.

Gülcan Acar

Source: "Theimiussa" Dünden Bugüne Antalya [Volume II], Antalya Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism (2012)

Places to Visit in Antalya Address: Theimiussa Antik Kenti, Üçağız, Demre / Antalya