Andriaca (Çayağzi)

Andriake, the port city of Myra, can be found in Çayağzi, 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.

İlhan Aksit's book "Işık Ulkesi Lycia" (Lycia, Country of Light) and web site of Ministry of Culture & Tourism was used as a source for this webpage.