PATARA ANCIENT CITY

The ancient city of Patara is located on the coast between Antalya and Fethiye, at the southwestern end of the Xanthos Valley. Known as the birthplace of the god Apollo and the center of the Apollo oracle, Patara is one of the most important and oldest cities of Lycia. The first information regarding Patara's historical existence comes from the historians Herodotus and Hecataeus, concerning the Apollo oracle. Herodotus provides the first accounts describing the Lycian campaign of the army under the Persian commander Harpagos around 540 BC. While previously there was insufficient historical and archaeological information about the city before the 6th century, the Patara excavations, which have been carried out continuously since 1988, have unearthed Protogeometric pottery fragments along with Bronze Age finds at Tepecik, dating them to the 11th and 10th centuries BC and providing us with information about earlier periods. Furthermore, the fact that two terracotta figurines found inside the Tepecik Cistern date back to the Late Bronze Age or Early Iron Age indicates traces of continuous settlement. Işık, who explained that Saint Nicholas, also known as "Santa Claus," the bishop of the ancient city of Myra, was born in Patara, said: "He received his religious education here. The history of Patara continues uninterrupted. Cem Sultan, on the orders of his father Fatih, held a meeting with the Rhodians at Patara Port. A wireless telegraph station was built here by Sultan Abdul Hamid II. We are in a spiral of history that has continued with very few interruptions to this day. This is practically the cradle of civilizations, one of the most special cities of Anatolia."