Letoon Ancient City
According to a legend told by the poet Ovid, the Goddess Leto, who was pregnant by Zeus, gave birth to her twin children Artemis and Apollo in Delos, then came to the place where the Xanthos River reaches the sea and continued along the river until it reached the source where the Temple of Leto is today. walks. The goddess, who wanted to wash her children in the spring but was prevented by the local people, turned the local people into frogs because they did not allow it. The establishment of the Letoon ruins is based on this mythology. According to the findings unearthed during the 30-year excavations at the Letoon ruins, the first settlement dates back to the 7th century BC. The ruins and inscriptions found here show that Letoon was a political and religious center during the Lycian Union period. The mosaic, known as the Apollo Mosaic, located in the middle of the Temple of Apollo, was removed by the excavation team and moved to the Fethiye Archaeological Museum because it was vulnerable to natural destruction in the panel excavation area, and is exhibited in the museum today. The Trilingual Inscription, found in the Hellenistic garbage dump near the Temple of Apollo and exhibited today in the Fethiye Archaeological Museum, is of great importance. The inscription, written in Lycian, Aramaic and Greek, played a major role in the decipherment of the Lycian language. There is a fountain building dedicated to the Nymph cult in the southwest of the temples and an early Christian church on the eastern edge of this fountain. A stoa and a Hellenistic theater are among the ruins worth seeing in the ruins.
