Turkey
Myra
Rock-cut Lycian tombs stacked like a honeycomb above the church where Saint Nicholas was bishop.
The tombs are stacked storeys high, each carved to look like a wooden house: doors, beams and pitched roofs cut from solid rock. Below them, the theatre's stone seats curve toward a stage strewn with carved theatrical masks. And at the foot of it all stands the church where a 4th-century bishop named Nicholas quietly became the most famous saint in the world.
Myra is an ancient Lycian city at modern Demre on Turkey's Mediterranean coast. Its rock-cut tombs, carved between the 5th and 3rd centuries BCE, mimic timber-frame houses in the distinctive Lycian facade style. The grand theatre held more than ten thousand spectators, its stage blocks still carrying carved masks and mythological scenes. Saint Nicholas, the real bishop behind the Santa Claus legend, served at Myra in the 4th century AD, and the Church of St Nicholas in Demre draws Orthodox pilgrims from Russia, Greece and Serbia, especially for the commemoration each 6 December. Lycian, Roman and early Christian layers stack into one of the densest sites on the coast.
Solo
Myra compresses three civilisations into a single hillside. Take your time with the tomb facades, find the carved masks by the stage, and sit in the church where Santa Claus was a real person.
Couple
Lycian tombs above, Roman theatre below, Saint Nicholas's church around the corner: a layered visit that pairs naturally with the nearby coast.
Family
The Santa Claus connection gives children an immediate way into the site, and the honeycomb of rock tombs makes the ancient world feel real.
- Saint Nicholas, the real bishop behind the Santa Claus legend, held his see at Myra in the 4th century AD.
- The Lycian rock tombs above the theatre mimic wooden houses in stone, stacked storeys high up the cliff.
- The theatre held more than ten thousand spectators, and carved theatrical masks still lie among its stage blocks.
- The Saint Nicholas commemoration each 6 December draws Orthodox pilgrims from Russia, Greece and Serbia.
Gazel böreği, phyllo rolled round spiced mince and potato and scattered with sesame.
Borana, fried potato under garlic yoghurt and poached egg, finished with red pepper butter.
Olympia
Greece
Ancient starting blocks still mark the stadium where Olympic contests unfolded for centuries.
Canterbury
England
Pilgrim stones worn smooth by eight centuries of kneeling, glowing golden at dusk.
Tomar
Portugal
A fortress where Templar knights heard mass on horseback in an octagon built for Jerusalem.
Epidaurus
Greece
A 14,000-seat theatre with acoustics so precise a coin drop on stage reaches the back row.
Lake Van
Turkey
A vast soda sea where you float without trying, ringed by snow-capped volcanoes.
Sumela Monastery
Turkey
A monastery clinging to a cliff 300 metres above a misty Black Sea valley.
Pamukkale
Turkey
Thermal water spills down white travertine terraces like a frozen waterfall you can wade through.
Giresun Island
Turkey
The eastern Black Sea's only island, its Hellenistic temple foundations sleeping beneath hazelnut trees.