Holiday on the Turquoise Coast

Andriake was the port of ancient Myra, located five kilometers southwest of today's town of Demre in the Turkish province of Antalya, at the mouth of the river Andrakos (Kokar Çayı). Today, the port is silted up or marshy due to the river's alluvial deposits.

Already during the construction of the coastal road from Demre to Kaş in the 50s of the last century, the former urban area had been cut through. Just above the access road to the excavation area and to Çayağzı, as the "harbour" is called today, the ruins of the nymphaeum have been preserved. One can only guess what fell victim to the excavator during the construction of the road and the later 4-lane extension to the D400.
But with this Andriake shares the fate of some ancient cities on the coast, which modern road construction could hardly avoid.

For centuries the ruins of Andriake went unnoticed, but rather served residents of Kale, as Demre was formerly known, as a quarry for the construction of their houses and stables.

Since 2005 in Andriake by a team of the Austrian Archaeological Institutes field researches carried out.

To expand the Tourism in the region began under the supervision of Akdeniz Üniversitesi Antalya in December 2012 at the granary extensive restoration work, which will be completed in spring 2014 have been largely completed.
In the meantime, a new entrance to the excavation site a large car park and a modern visitor centre was built. To the Agora and the museum in the Granarium, paved paths were created.

Archaeological evidence indicates that the site was founded in the early Hellenistic period. At that time the settlement extended over two hills on either side of the harbour entrance. The place is first mentioned in 197 BC, when Antiochos III conquered Andriake. In the course of the capture of the port by the Romans in 43 B.C., a chain that secured the port entrance was broken. The apostle Paul waited here in the autumn of 59 AD on his journey to Rome for better winds and changed ship (Acts 27:5-6).

Andriake was all Apparently much larger than the today rather sparse remains of the of the former development.
The importance of Andriakes was located on one of the most important shipping routes. In of the roman empire, Andriake was one of the most most important ports for the grain fleet from Egypt, initially for Rome, since the 4th century AD increasingly for Constantinople.

In the middle imperial period a massive expansion of the port infrastructure. Besides the Granarium, a (built in 129 AD), were built on the southern shore of the harbour basin a large square and other buildings, today largely destroyed erected.
A water pipe secured the water supply, which until then had only been was achieved through cistern management.

In the 6th century the harbour settlement experienced a further boom. Six large churches and two bathing facilities were built as well as numerous other buildings. The churches dated to the end of the 5th or the 6th century were three-nave basilicas, each with a semicircular apse on the east wall.

The reason for this upswing is pretty sure to see the production of the dye purple. Natural purple was (and probably still is) one of the most expensive dyes in the world. The toga of the Roman emperors was dyed with purple, while Roman senators and magistrates  wore a purple stripe on their togas.

The dye was/is derived from a gland of the snail Hexaplex trunculus won. For one gram of paint, thousands of snails be processed.
The problems identified in Andriake Shell deposits occupy a volume of 300 cubic metres. If you extrapolate this amount, according to Prof. Gerhard Forstenpointner from the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna also with conservative estimates at about 60 million snails, which were processed here.

So Andriake was one of the the most important production sites of antiquity, that over time the Andriacs have become overfished snails have robbed themselves of their livelihood.

The town was probably abandoned in the early Middle Ages, probably due to the increasing siltation of the harbour basin. In Ottoman times, a small fort was built on the western tip of the northern settlement hill.