Myra Through
the Ages

Why Myra's History Matters

Most visitors come to Myra for the photogenic rock tombs and leave within an hour. But the story behind these cliffs — a story that stretches from one of the world's earliest democracies to the man who became Santa Claus — is what transforms a quick stop into a genuinely meaningful experience.

Myra wasn't a quiet backwater. At its height, it was one of the six most powerful cities in the Lycian League — a democratic federation that the American Founding Fathers studied when designing the United States Constitution. It was a city that minted its own coins, hosted 10,000 spectators in its theatre, operated one of the Mediterranean's major grain harbours, and served as the seat of a Christian bishop whose legacy would become the most recognised cultural figure on Earth.

And yet, today, most of ancient Myra lies buried under 5 to 7 metres of river sediment beneath the modern town of Demre. What you see at the archaeological site is a fraction of what once existed — the cliff-face tombs and the theatre survived because they're carved into rock, while the agora, the temples, the baths, and the residential quarters were gradually swallowed by centuries of alluvial deposits from the Demre River.

Lycian Origins (5th–4th Century BCE)

The name "Myra" is Lycian in origin, and its meaning has been debated by scholars for over a century. Some connect it to the Lycian word for "myrrh" — the aromatic resin used in ancient religious ceremonies — while others link it to a Lycian root meaning "place of the Mother Goddess." What's certain is that by the 5th century BCE, Myra was already a significant settlement with monumental architecture.

The earliest evidence of Myra's importance comes from the Lycian rock-cut tombs, which date to approximately the 5th and 4th centuries BCE. These aren't crude cave burials — they're architecturally sophisticated monuments with temple-style façades, Ionic columns, and detailed relief carvings depicting funeral feasts and mythological scenes. The sheer number and quality of the tombs indicate that Myra was wealthy and culturally advanced long before the Romans arrived.

Myra and the Lycian League

Myra's greatest claim to political significance is its membership in the Lycian League (Lycian: Trm̃mili), a federation of approximately 23 cities along the southwestern coast of Anatolia. The Greek geographer Strabo, writing in the 1st century BCE, described this federation in detail — and his description caught the attention of Alexander Hamilton and James Madison 1,800 years later.

The League operated as a proportional representative democracy: member cities were assigned one, two, or three votes in the federal assembly based on their size and importance. Myra, along with Xanthos, Patara, Pinara, Tlos, and Olympos, held the maximum of three votes — making it one of the six "metropoleis" of the federation.

Each member city elected judges, collected proportional taxes, and sent delegates to a common assembly. The League elected a Lyciarch (federal president) and appointed federal judges — a remarkably modern system for the ancient world. The Roman statesman Montesquieu praised it as the "model of an excellent confederate republic," and his analysis directly influenced the American federalist debates.

Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic Period

In 334 BCE, Alexander the Great swept through Asia Minor. Lycia submitted relatively peacefully — unlike Halicarnassus to the north, which was besieged — and Myra continued to function under Macedonian influence. After Alexander's death in 323 BCE, the Lycian cities passed between the warring successor kingdoms — the Ptolemies of Egypt and the Seleucids of Syria each controlled the region at various points.

Under Ptolemaic control (roughly 309–197 BCE), Myra and the other Lycian cities enjoyed a degree of autonomy. The Ptolemies were primarily interested in the region's strategic naval position and timber resources — Lycian forests supplied wood for warships — rather than in imposing direct administration. This hands-off approach allowed Myra to maintain its civic institutions, its coinage, and its participation in the Lycian League.

The transition to Seleucid control in the early 2nd century BCE proved less comfortable. When the Seleucid king Antiochus III attempted tighter control over Lycia, the League sought Roman intervention. The decisive moment came in 168 BCE, when Rome — after defeating Macedonia — formally recognised Lycian independence as a reward for the League's loyalty. This began a period of about a century in which the Lycian League operated at the peak of its political power, free from both Hellenistic overlordship and direct Roman rule.

Throughout this turbulent Hellenistic period, Myra thrived economically. As a strategic port city with access to the inland Lycian territories and the Mediterranean trade routes, it became a commercial hub of considerable reach. Coins minted at Myra during the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE have been found across the eastern Mediterranean — in Egypt, Cyprus, and the Aegean islands — testifying to the city's trade network.

Roman Golden Age (1st–3rd Century CE)

Lycia was annexed as a Roman province in 43 CE under Emperor Claudius, ending the political independence of the Lycian League — though the League continued to function as a cultural and religious institution for several more centuries. For Myra, the Roman period was paradoxically a time of both political loss and material splendour.

The Romans transformed Myra into a monumental city. The most visible legacy is the theatre, built in the 2nd century CE and capable of seating over 10,000 spectators. At 110 metres in diameter and 30 metres in height, it was one of the largest theatres in Lycia. Its façade was decorated with elaborate marble reliefs depicting theatrical masks, mythological scenes, and portraits of the goddess Artemis — the patron deity of Myra.

The Temple of Artemis Eleuthera

Myra's most magnificent Roman-era building was the Temple of Artemis Eleuthera — "Artemis the Liberator." The Roman writer Pliny the Elder, in his Natural History, ranked it among the finest temples in the region, and dedications to Artemis are the most common inscriptions found at the site. The temple has never been fully excavated, and its exact location beneath modern Demre is still debated by archaeologists, though fragments of its columns and decorative elements have been recovered.

Artemis Eleuthera was not the Greek huntress Artemis — she was a distinctly Lycian mother-goddess figure, associated with nature, fertility, and civic protection. Her cult at Myra was so important that the Romans allowed it to continue alongside the official imperial cult. Coin evidence shows her image was used on Myra's currency well into the 3rd century CE.

Andriake: Myra's Harbour

No understanding of Roman Myra is complete without Andriake, the city's harbour located 5 kilometres to the south at the mouth of the Demre River. Andriake was one of the most important grain storage ports in the eastern Mediterranean — Rome's bread supply passed through here on its way from Egypt.

The massive Hadrian's Granary (horrea), built under Emperor Hadrian in the 2nd century CE, still stands at Andriake — now restored and serving as the Lycian Civilizations Museum. It's a monumental eight-chambered structure designed to store grain shipments at industrial scale, testifying to Myra's importance in Rome's supply chain. According to the Acts of the Apostles (27:5-6), the Apostle Paul himself transferred to a grain ship at Myra on his journey to Rome around 60 CE.

Saint Nicholas and the Christian Era (4th–7th Century CE)

The most globally significant chapter of Myra's history begins in the early 4th century CE with a man born around 270 CE in Patara, a Lycian coastal city approximately 70 kilometres to the west. His name was Nicholas, and he would become the Bishop of Myra, one of the most venerated saints in Christian history, and — eventually — the figure behind Santa Claus.

Nicholas rose to the bishopric during the reign of Emperor Diocletian, who launched the Great Persecution against Christians in 303 CE. Tradition holds that Nicholas was imprisoned and tortured during this period but survived to attend the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE — the foundational gathering where the Nicene Creed was formulated.

After Nicholas's death (traditionally dated to 6 December 343 CE), his reputation grew rapidly. Myra became one of the most important pilgrimage destinations in the Byzantine world. A basilica was built over his burial site — the Church of St. Nicholas, which still stands in modern Demre — and it drew pilgrims from across Christendom for centuries.

The cult of Saint Nicholas spread through Greek, Russian, and eventually Western European Christianity. His feast day, December 6th, became associated with gift-giving traditions, and by the medieval period, "Sinterklaas" in the Netherlands had already evolved into a recognisable precursor to the modern Santa Claus. The chain from 4th-century Myra to 21st-century department stores is long but unbroken.

Byzantine Myra: The Metropolitanate

Nicholas's legacy transformed Myra into far more than a pilgrimage stop. By the 5th century, the city had been elevated to the seat of a metropolitan bishopric — the ecclesiastical capital of the entire province of Lycia, overseeing more than thirty suffragan dioceses across the region. In the rigid hierarchy of the Byzantine church, this was a position of enormous prestige and political influence.

Emperor Theodosius II fortified the city in the early 5th century, enclosing it within defensive walls as threats from the interior grew. A century later, Emperor Justinian I commissioned a major expansion of the Church of St. Nicholas in the 6th century, transforming the modest basilica into a grand three-aisled structure with a dome — a scale of imperial investment that underscored Myra's standing in the Byzantine world. The church became one of the most richly decorated religious buildings in Lycia, drawing not only pilgrims but imperial officials and clergy.

This was also the period when Myra's pagan past was actively overwritten. The great Temple of Artemis Eleuthera — once the city's most splendid building — was either dismantled for building materials or left to decay as Christianity became the only permitted religion. Columns, marble blocks, and decorative elements from Roman-era temples were repurposed into church walls and civic structures across the city. What the river sediment didn't bury, the Byzantines recycled.

Decline and Destruction (7th–15th Century)

Myra's decline was not a single catastrophic event but a long, grinding process spanning nearly a millennium. Several converging forces turned one of Lycia's greatest cities into a buried ruin.

Arab Raids

Beginning in the 7th century, Arab naval forces launched repeated raids along the Lycian coast. Myra and its harbour Andriake were attacked multiple times between 655 and 807 CE. These raids destroyed infrastructure, disrupted trade, and forced much of the population to retreat inland. The once-thriving harbour at Andriake became increasingly difficult to defend.

River Silting and the 1044 Earthquake

The Demre River — the same watercourse that had sustained the city for centuries — gradually turned against it. Silt deposits from the surrounding mountains slowly raised the river plain, burying lower sections of the city. This process was dramatically accelerated by a catastrophic earthquake in 1044 CE, which caused massive landslides and further silting.

By the 12th century, alluvial deposits had raised the ground level by several metres, burying the Roman streets, the agora, the baths, and portions of the theatre. The rock-cut tombs and the upper sections of the theatre survived because they're carved into or built against the cliff face — everything else was swallowed by mud.

The Theft of Saint Nicholas's Relics (1087)

In 1087, Italian merchants from Bari sailed to Myra and removed the bones of Saint Nicholas from his sarcophagus in the church, taking them back to Bari where they were installed in a new basilica. The incident — which Bari celebrates as a "translation" and Demre considers a theft — remains a point of cultural friction to this day. Turkiye has repeatedly requested the return of the relics, most recently in formal diplomatic communications.

The loss of the relics reduced Myra's importance as a pilgrimage destination, accelerating the city's decline. By the time the Seljuk Turks took control of the region in the late 11th century, Myra was a shadow of its former self — a small, predominantly agricultural settlement in a silted-over river valley.

The cumulative damage was staggering. In the space of four centuries — from the first Arab raid in 655 CE to the relic theft of 1087 — Myra lost its harbour, its trade routes, its structural integrity (the 1044 earthquake buried entire neighbourhoods under landslide debris), and finally its most sacred possession. You can trace these milestones in the complete chronological timeline at the end of this article.

The Ottoman Centuries (14th–19th Century)

After the Seljuk Turks absorbed the region in the late 11th century, the territory eventually passed to the Beylik of Teke — one of the Anatolian principalities — and then to Ottoman control by the early 15th century. By this time, the name "Myra" had long faded from everyday use. The settlement was known locally as Demre, though Ottoman administrative records sometimes referred to the wider district as Kale ("fortress"), a name that would persist officially until 2005.

Under the Ottomans, the area around the ancient city functioned as a quiet agricultural village in the Teke Sanjak of Antalya Province. There was no urban centre to speak of — the population lived in scattered homesteads along the river plain, cultivating the same alluvial soil that had buried the Roman city beneath their feet. The Church of St. Nicholas continued to exist but was repeatedly damaged by floods and earthquakes; Ottoman authorities permitted its partial restoration in the 19th century, largely at the request of Russian pilgrims who still venerated the site.

It's a strange thought — and one that struck me growing up here — that for roughly 400 years, farmers in Demre were ploughing fields and tending orchards directly above one of the most important cities of ancient Lycia. The theatre was partially visible, the cliff tombs were always there, but the agora, the baths, and the temples of a city that once hosted 10,000 people at a single performance lay silent under metres of river mud, completely forgotten.

European Rediscovery (19th Century)

For centuries, Myra existed as a footnote in classical texts — known to scholars but unvisited and largely forgotten by the wider world. That changed in the early 19th century, when European explorers began systematically documenting the archaeological remains of Lycia.

The most influential early visitor was Charles Fellows, a British explorer and archaeologist who reached Myra in 1840. His detailed drawings and descriptions of the rock-cut tombs were published in London and caused a sensation — the Victorian public was fascinated by these exotic, spectacularly carved cliff-face monuments.

Fellows was followed by a succession of European archaeologists, surveyors, and travelers. The Austrian Otto Benndorf led systematic surveys in the 1880s. French and German teams documented inscriptions. Gradually, the outlines of Myra's history were reconstructed from coins, inscriptions, classical texts, and the physical evidence of the tombs and theatre.

Modern Archaeology and Ongoing Discoveries

Systematic excavation at Myra has been led primarily by Turkish archaeologists from Akdeniz University in Antalya since the 1960s, with the most intensive campaigns in recent decades. The results have been extraordinary — and the potential for future discoveries is immense.

The 2021 Terracotta Mask Discovery

In 2021, a team led by Professor Nevzat Çevik announced the discovery of dozens of 2,200-year-old terracotta theatre masks and votive sculptures near the theatre. Many bore Lycian inscriptions — a significant find because Lycian-language texts are relatively rare. The masks are remarkably well-preserved, showing comic and tragic theatrical characters with vivid facial expressions, and they now form a key exhibit at the Lycian Civilizations Museum at Andriake.

The Hidden Chapel (2022)

Beneath the floor of the Church of St. Nicholas, excavators discovered a sealed 13th-century chapel that had been hidden for over 700 years. Most remarkably, the chapel features a narrow window positioned so that on certain dates, sunlight projects a cross shape onto the interior wall — a deliberate architectural light effect built into the structure. This discovery suggests that the church underwent more phases of construction and modification than previously understood.

What Remains Buried

Perhaps the most tantalizing aspect of Myra's archaeology is what hasn't been found yet. Geophysical surveys and test excavations have confirmed that major structures — including what is believed to be the Temple of Artemis Eleuthera, the agora, Roman baths, and extensive residential quarters — lie buried 5 to 7 metres below the current ground level of Demre. For a detailed look at these lost monuments and what we know about them, see our dedicated guide.

Excavating these structures would require navigating beneath modern buildings, roads, and greenhouses — a logistically and politically complex undertaking. For now, researchers work with what's accessible: the theatre, the necropolises, and the church. But the consensus among archaeologists is that what we see today represents perhaps 15 to 20 percent of the ancient city.

Complete Chronological Timeline

The following timeline summarizes the major events in Myra's 2,500-year history. For detailed coverage of specific periods, see the sections above.