The Dalyan Rock Tombs, the Temples Cut Into the Cliff

From the Dalyan waterfront you do not need a guidebook to find them. Across the river the cliff has doors in it, or something close to doors: columns, pediments and shallow porches cut into the limestone at the height of a small house, the rock gone the colour of burnt orange where the light reaches it.

They look like Greek temples that someone forgot to build outwards. The carvers worked the other way, taking stone away until a façade was left, and behind each one is a chamber for the dead.

A street front cut into rock

The tombs face the town across a bend of the Dalyan river, with reed beds at their feet and moored boats in front. They date from the middle of the fourth century BC and follow a form found across Lycia, the temple front with Ionic columns and a carved pediment. The city they belonged to, Kaunos, was Carian and sat on the border, which is what makes the cliff interesting. It is a place where one culture borrowed another's way of burying its notables and made it local.

More than 170 graves are cut into these cliffs. The temple fronts you notice from Dalyan are only a small share of them, gathered in two main groups, and they were placed to be seen from the water, which is exactly where you are standing when you see them.

Light on the façades

The façades change with the light. Flat midday sun leaves them pale and a little blank. When the light is lower, the relief deepens, the colour comes up in the stone and the shadows inside the porches go dark enough to make the doorways look open. Early or late in the day the day boats are off the water, and the river is quiet.

There is nothing to do here but look. There is no site to walk and no gate to pass, and the view improves with patience, not with effort.

A cliff that changes after dark

After dark the tombs are lit, which is atmospheric but a different experience from the daytime view. The colour of the stone goes, and the façades read as shapes against the night. Many visitors do both in one stay, with a boat ride by day and a slow dinner in Dalyan facing the cliff.

The tombs also sit on the way to the rest of the delta. Boats pass beneath them on the route to İztuzu Beach, the long sandbar where loggerhead turtles nest, and many trips add the mud baths on the way back.

Editor's picks

• Look from the waterfront first.Sit with a tea and let the scale settle. The tombs read best from a distance.
• Take a small boat along the cliff.The channel runs close under the rock, and from the water you see the carving, not a silhouette.
• Go early or late.The light is lower, the water is quieter and the cliff does the rest.
• Find the unfinished tomb.The second front from the right was meant to be the largest of its group and was never completed. Its rough upper half shows that the carvers worked from the top down.
• Pair it with Kaunos.The city these tombs belonged to sits on the hill behind them, and its ruins explain who they were for.
• Eat by the water.Grilled fish in Dalyan as the evening comes in, with the cliff across the river.

Insider notes

Entering the tombs is not allowed, for the visitor's safety and for the stone's. Visitors once climbed the rock for photographs, and that is why it is now closed and watched. The best frame is from the boat anyway.

The delta is a protected area, and speed boats are banned on the river. Choose a small operator over a large party boat. You will see more and leave less behind. Agree the route with the boatman before you set off, ask when the last boat runs, and bring a hat, because there is no shade on the river at midday.

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How to get to the Dalyan tombs

Dalaman is the closest airport, about 35 minutes by road. The tombs face the town, so from the waterfront you are already looking at them, and the boats leave from there. Flights from Europe and Istanbul are covered in Getting there.

After dark the cliff looks like a different place.