Fethiye Museum and the British Museum

Work on the hotel is progressing – slowly. The outside has been painted – in parts; other bits are still the old yellowish colour. I was so impressed when the painters arrived and the first thing they did was to put up a professional-looking scaffold. However I haven’t seen them use it since; it seems they prefer to hang off balconies or the roof reaching as far as they can – and then a bit more. I wonder if our insurance covers industrial accidents!


Kaan and I finally went to check out the refurbished Fethiye Museum last week. It’s not very big and doesn’t take long to look around but the pieces are quite well displayed now. There are a few statues and carved panels; one of the most significant pieces is a mosaic floor from the Temple of Apollo at Letoon which shows the symbols of Apollo – a bow and arrow and a lyre. The rest is mostly small pots, coins and jewellery.

The most amazing thing, for me, is the age of the things there; it starts with a cabinet of late Bronze Age items some of which date from 3000 BC! Most of the things belonged to the Lycian people who lived in this area from that time until about the sixth century AD. Letoon, where the mosaic was found, was the spiritual centre of Lycia but other important settlements include Tlos, Xanthos (jeep safaris usually visit these), Cadianda and Telmessos, which was located where Fethiye is today and is still visible in the form of the amphitheatre and rock tombs.

One of the interesting things about Lycia and its people is that it represents the first example of a democratic federation. Each settlement was a self-governing city-state but joined together in the Lycian League to organize trade between cities and defence of the area. Free male citizens of each city elected their representatives on the League’s Assembly whose number depended on the size of the city. Another interesting fact is the number of important leaders who came to Lycia, including Alexander the Great and the Roman Emperor Hadrian, who built huge grain stores at Patara during his stay there.

You can see the remains of these and many other features of Lycia during a visit to Fethiye. Actually, you can visit some of it without even coming to Fethiye as there are some large pieces in the British Museum. Years ago, after Cem had spent the summer showing jeep safari customers the Harpy Tomb at Xanthos, we visited the British Museum. When we got to the Xanthian room and he saw the real tomb (the one on site is a copy) he got – understandably – a little worked up and we left the museum shortly afterwards! During a visit to the area in 1838, Charles Fellows sent 70 crates of artefacts back to the British Museum and while I don’t dispute his work in uncovering some of these things and making sure they were preserved, I think it is time most of them were returned here, to be displayed in the Fethiye museum!