Such a place is the curiously undiscovered Kanlıdivane, midway between Erdemli and Kızkalesi on the eastern Mediterranean coast, where a collection of early Byzantine basilicas cluster together around an enormous tree-filled chasm that must surely have seemed to the ancients like the very gates of hell.
According to most commentators, Kanlıdivane means “Place of Blood” or even “Bloody Place of Madness,” and the locals are only too keen to explain how wrongdoers used to be hurled to their deaths in the chasm where wild animals waited to devour them. In reality, the name is probably just a corruption of the ancient Carytelis via the intermediary Kanıdeli, but the sheer isolation of the site and the crowding together of the monuments here makes it immediately obvious that this was somewhere of huge religious significance, more so even than the similar and certainly much better known site of Cennet Cehennem (Heaven and Hell) not so very far away along the coast to the west. Otherwise the only place even vaguely reminiscent of Kanlıdivane is Binbirkilise (1001 Churches) near Karaman, and of course that lacks the added attraction of the crater-like hole.
The chasm is truly mind-boggling, measuring 90 meters in length by 70 meters in width and dropping down some 60 meters to the bottom. Today you can only venture a little way inside it, just far enough to be able to make out a rock-cut Roman carving of a family of six people. There's a second carving of a solitary soldier further down into the chasm and visible from the eastern rim; in times gone by it apparently bore an inscription identifying the man as one Trogomes. These carvings are just two amongst many to be found dotted about the Kızkalesi area. The most impressive are the 17 figures carved in a beautiful valley six kilometers inland from Kızkalesi and known collectively as the Adamkayalar (Rock figures), although you'll need a good head for heights to cope with the path down to view them. Far easier -- and safer -- to observe is the single warrior carved in the necropolis immediately across the road from the onshore castle at Kızkalesi.
Although Kanlıdivane is often described as a town, the impression actually given by the site is of an enormous shrine -- something like Lourdes, perhaps -- that survived from pagan times into those of early Christianity. Right beside the parking lot and looming over the chasm stands a three-story Hellenistic tower that bears an inscription linking the chasm to Zeus Olbios, the Greek god worshipped at Olba near Uzuncaburç, above what is now Silifke. But the ruins of four basilicas lining the edge of the chasm suggest that the worship of Zeus segued neatly into the worship of Christ during the course of the fourth century and hung on here at least into the sixth century. Something of the power of the site still hangs on even today to judge by a handful of more modern tombs lined up in front of the Second Basilica.
There's little now to distinguish the four basilicas bar how much still remains of them. The most impressive are the so-called First Basilica, which stands closest to the tower, and the Fourth Basilica, which is also known as the Papylos Church, after the donor whose name still survives in an inscription. This stands right on the edge of the drop and although it presumably once had a wall on the side overlooking the chasm this is now completely lost, and it's tempting to imagine in its place one vast picture window overlooking that immense and frightening breach in the earth. The basilicas seem to have been simply decorated and today only the crosses on their lintels and a few stone capitals survive. Those in the Papylos Church are by far the finest, resembling ferns gently blowing in the breeze. Records indicate that there was once a fresco of the Four Evangelists here, but this is long gone.
Beyond the basilicas more anonymous ruined buildings straggle up the hillside, which is surmounted by a striking second-century tomb built for her husband and children by a local woman called Aba in a design that evokes that of a small temple.
After Kanlıdivane, almost any other ruin is bound to come as an anti-climax, but this is a part of the coast that boasts an embarrassment of riches when it comes to archeological remains, and just a little further on towards Kızkalesi is Ayaş, where excavations have brought to light the extensive remains of Elaiussa Sebeste, an ancient double act with Elaiussa the older, olive-exporting sister to Sebeste which was founded in the first century by a king of Cappadocia in homage to the emperor Augustus.
As you come into town from Kanlıdivane you'll see an ancient theater rising up on the right-hand side of the road. The remains of an old bathhouse mark the way up to the newly excavated agora (marketplace), a vast quadrangle dating back to the second century A.D. As so often the archeologists have uncovered a layer-cake of a city here. The agora appears to have centered on a portico surrounding a circular building, but beneath that came to light a beautiful fish mosaic carpet that may have belonged to an earlier villa. Later a Christian basilica with apses at both ends was built slap bang on top of it, perhaps to house the remains of a long-forgotten martyr. The basilica appears to have been abandoned in the seventh century, after which craft workshops opened on the site. These too soon vanished, and in the 13th century most of the remaining structures appear to have come crashing down in an earthquake.
If you follow the road up the hillside, you'll come to the remains of the theater, a simple affair hacked straight out of the rock. The ruins of Elaiussa Sebeste straddle the coast road, and back towards the sea there are traces of twin harbors, and a bathhouse built right beside one of them to service the needs of the sailors. Sadly the ruins are fenced off from visitors but through the gate you'll be able to see little limestone squares arranged diagonally on the façade of the baths, a pattern that was common in Italy but rarely seen in Asia Minor.
Finally if you walk back towards the center of Ayaş, you'll pass the equally inaccessible remains of what was once a Byzantine palace dating back to the sixth century. Here the military governor would have lived in some style amid colonnaded porticos and huge ceremonial halls. It was not a lifestyle that endured for long, however, since by the start of the seventh century the palace too appears to have been abandoned.
WHERE TO STAY
The two most obvious bases from which to explore Kanlıdivane and Elaiussa Sebeste are Mersin to the east and Kızkalesi to the west. Mersin is full of business hotels, Kızkalesi of hotels catering to the sun-and-sand brigade. Take your pick -- but bear in mind that out of season Kızkalesi can resemble a ghost town.
HOW TO GET THERE
The quickest way to get here is to fly to Adana and then take a bus heading west to Kızkalesi. Without your own car, ask to be dropped off in Erdemli, where you can rent a taxi to visit Kanlıdivane (in high summer only this may also be possible from Kızkalesi). Buses servicing the coast road from Mersin to Kızkalesi pass right through Ayaş for Eliaussa Sebeste.
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