Kayakoy

Kayakoy lies in the hills eight kilometres from Fethiye and is known as a ghost village. Until 1923 the Greek town of Levissi stood here, home to about two thousand Orthodox families engaged in crafts and trade. After the Greco-Turkish war, under the treaty on the exchange of populations, the inhabitants were taken away to Greece, while the Muslims from Macedonia who arrived to replace them did not settle on the stony slopes and moved down to the plain. The earthquake of 1957 finished the job: the houses were left without roofs and floors, but the walls and the layout survived almost completely. Today several hundred houses stand on the slope, along with two large churches with fragments of wall painting and mosaic floors, chapels, a school and water cisterns. The streets are arranged so that no house blocks its neighbours' view of the valley. The site has been declared a monument and an open-air museum, and building is prohibited. Kayakoy is considered one of the prototypes for the village in Louis de Bernieres' novel 'Birds Without Wings'. An old path about seven kilometres long leads over the hill from the village to Gemiler Bay. Some of the houses at the foot of the slope have been bought up and restored as homes.

On the map