Kayaköy 3.82

Kayaköy, anciently known as Lebessos and Lebessus and later pronounced as Livissi is a village 8 km south of Fethiye in southwestern Turkey. In Roman ancient times it was a Greek-speaking city in the Lycia province. Anatolian Greeks continued to inhabit the city until approximately 1922 when they either perished or fled to Greece. The townspeople were subsequently barred from returning by the 1923 Population exchange between Greece and Turkey. The ghost town, now preserved as a museum village, consists of hundreds of rundown but still mostly standing Greek-style houses and churches which cover a small mountainside and serve as a stopping place for tourists visiting Fethiye and nearby Ölüdeniz.Its population in 1900 was about 2,000, almost all Greek Orthodox Christians; however, it is now empty except for tour groups and roadside vendors selling handmade goods. However, there is a selection of houses which have been restored, and are currently occupied.HistoryLivissi was built probably in the 18th century on the site of the ancient city of Lebessus, a town of ancient Lycia. Lycian tombs can be found in the village and at Gokceburun, north of the village.Lebessus is mentioned as a Christian bishopric in the Notitia Episcopatuum of Pseudo-Epiphanius composed under the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius in about 640, and in the similar early 10th-century document attributed to Emperor Leo VI the Wise, as a suffragan of the metropolitan see of Myra, the capital of the Roman province of Lycia, to which Lebessus belonged. Since it is no longer a residential bishopric, Lebessus is listed by the Catholic Church as a titular see.