Olympos

Olympos,

History

Olympos was founded on both of sides of the mouth of a river. A member of the Lycian federation,the city was invaded by the Cilician pirates until 78 B.C. and then became a part of the Roman Empire.The most interesting building here today is the remains of the door of a temple located west of the river.In Chimera near Olympos,a flame comes out of the ground constantly.As displayed in the Anatolian Civilizations Museum in Ankara,Hephaistos is a fire breadhing,goat headed lion with a snake head at the tip of his tail and with eagle wings.This figure was inspired from the Hitttes .The people of Olympos build a temple by the perpetual flame for their most important god,Hephaistos(Vulcain in Roman mythology). In the Middle Ages, Venetians, Genoese and Rhodians built fortresses along the coast, but, by the 15th century Olympos had been abandoned. Today the site is fascinating, not just for its ruins that are fragmentary and widely scattered amidst the thick greenery of wild grapevines, flowering oleander, bay trees, wild figs and pines, but for its site, just inland from a beautiful beach along the course of a stream which runs through a rocky gorge

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