Olympos

Olympos was a Lycian city and later a Roman port, and what makes it unlike other ancient sites on this coast is that nobody cleared the vegetation: the ruins lie along a river valley under a canopy of laurel, fig, oleander and wild vine, so you walk a shaded path beside water past a theatre half-swallowed by trees, a temple gateway, a bath complex with mosaic, Byzantine church walls, a bridge abutment and sarcophagi standing in the undergrowth, with the whole thing ending at a pebble beach between two rock walls. The site was a Chimaera cult centre, connected to the flames burning on the mountain above at Yanartaş. The valley behind is lined with the treehouse camps that made Olympos a backpacker fixture from the 1990s - wooden cabins, communal dinners, and a rule that no permanent concrete building may go up in the protected valley, which is why the coast here still looks as it does.

What you actually see

• The overgrown ruins - theatre, baths and tombs under the canopy.
• The river path - the shaded walk down the valley.
• The beach - pebble shore between rock walls at the end.
• The treehouse camps - the wooden lodgings up the valley.

When to go

April to June and September to October. Mornings are quiet; the shade makes it more bearable in summer than most sites, but the beach is crowded then.

Honest expectations

Paths are rough and cross the stream, which can be knee-deep after rain. Camps are basic - shared bathrooms, intermittent hot water, and lively at night. The beach is pebble, not sand.

Nearby

Çıralı and the Chimaera flames are over the headland; Adrasan is south and Phaselis north.