Cyaneae-Kyaenai (Yavi or Yuva village)

Another area of ruins on the Finike-Kaş highway is Kyaenai set up on steep rocks on the road to Yavi village which is 23 kilometers from Kaş. 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.

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.