Kaş

VillagesMediterranean,Türkiye

A whitewashed harbour town on the Turkish Mediterranean built over Lycian Antiphellos, with sarcophagi at street corners and water deep enough for record freedives.

September·Peaking now

Sep–Oct

The sea stays warm while the crowds thin — the town's best stretch for being in the water rather than beside it.

Year-round The deep water, the Lycian sarcophagi at the street corners and the sea-facing theatre are here every day of the year.

Kaş is a whitewashed harbour town on the Mediterranean coast of Türkiye that never fully separated from the Lycian city underneath it. Antiphellos began as the port of an inland town and outgrew its parent, and its sarcophagi still stand at street corners. In the middle of Uzun Çarşı, the old bazaar street, the King's Tomb holds its ground: a fourth-century-BC sarcophagus with a high pointed lid and lion heads carved into the stone. Café tables press up to its base. Nobody knows whether a king was ever inside; the name comes from the lions. Its long verse epitaph is in Milyan, an old Lycian dialect nobody has deciphered. An English traveller counted more than a hundred tombs here in 1840; most were later broken up for building stone as the town spread. The water at the town's door does something unusual. A few hundred metres out the bottom is already far below anything you can see, with no current and almost no swell over it. That is why freedivers set their lines here, and why the world championship came in 2022. Your first descent on a rope is weightless and very quiet, with the surface shrinking overhead. The same depth keeps other things. A C-47 Dakota, retired from the Turkish army and deliberately sunk in 2009, lies intact on the seabed with both engines still in place. Near it a full-size replica of the Uluburun wreck stands in for the real Bronze Age ship, which lies far too deep to visit. Among the cargo raised from that ship was a gold scarab carrying Nefertiti's name, the only one ever found. You swim off the rocks at Küçük and Büyük Çakıl, the small and big pebble coves, down ladders bolted into the stone. And a few minutes west of the square sits a small Hellenistic theatre of twenty-six rows that never had a stage building. From the top row the stage in front of you is the open bay, with the Greek island of Meis on the horizon, twenty minutes off by ferry.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Mornings are the flat window — the sea stays glassy until the afternoon breeze comes up, so dive and freedive boats leave early and are usually back at the quay by mid-afternoon.
Don't come for the monk seal — a few live along this protected coast but almost nobody sees one. Groupers, octopus and the odd loggerhead turtle are the realistic company on a dive.
Save the ancient theatre for the last hour of light — climb to the top row, where the stage is the open bay and the seats empty out as the sun drops.
Bring your passport if you fancy Greece for lunch — the Meis ferry leaves from the same quay as the dive boats, and passport control happens after you land on the island.
August fills the lanes, not the sea — the harbour and bazaar are packed with Turkish holidaymakers, while the boats spread across dozens of dive sites and rarely feel crowded.

Things to do

1
Follow the breath-hold line down into the blue
Swim a few hundred metres out from the town beach and the bottom is already far beyond sight, which is exactly why the lines are set here. A first descent on a rope feels weightless and very quiet, the surface shrinking overhead. Beginners take a breath-hold course in the same water where the records are set; the deep lines belong to athletes who train here for months.
2
Dive the sunken Dakota and the Bronze Age replica
A C-47 Dakota, retired from the Turkish army and deliberately sunk in 2009, lies intact on the seabed with its twin engines still in place — shallow enough for ordinary certified divers. Nearby, a replica of the Uluburun wreck, laid out with copper ingots and stone anchors, stands in for the real one, which is far too deep to visit. Walls, canyons and caves fill out the rest of the sites.
3
Swim off the rocks at Büyük and Küçük Çakıl
Küçük Çakıl and Büyük Çakıl — "small pebble" and "big pebble" — are the two coves a short walk from the harbour, with low rocks that children and grown-ups jump from all summer. There is no sand: you climb down a ladder and the water is deep within a few strokes, cool and clean even in the crowded weeks of August. Across the bay at Limanağzı, roped lanes keep the gulets clear of swimmers.
4
Walk past a Lycian king's tomb in the bazaar
In the middle of Uzun Çarşı, the old bazaar street, stands the King's Tomb: a 4th-century-BC Lycian sarcophagus with a high pointed lid and lion heads carved into the stone. Café tables and shopfronts press right up to its base. Nobody knows whether a king was ever inside; the name comes from the lions, and it is the largest of the tombs that keep surfacing between the houses.
5
Climb the theatre whose seats face open sea
A small Hellenistic theatre of twenty-six stone rows sits a few minutes west of the main square, and it never had a stage building — unusually for Anatolia, the seats simply look out over the water. Climb to the top row and the stage is the bay itself, with the Greek island of Meis low on the horizon.
6
Ferry across to Meis for the day
The crossing from the harbour to Meis takes about twenty minutes and lands you in a pastel Greek harbour town, where the day is spent swimming off the rocks and eating slowly. Going and coming back gives you the odd pleasure of standing in two countries in one day, with Kaş still in sight across the water.

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Nearby

17 km