A hillside scattered with dozens of eternal flames burning from natural gas seeps in the rock. The effect is genuinely eerie, particularly at night, when the flames glow across the hillside among the ruins of a Byzantine church. Go in the evening — the flames are more visible and the heat less brutal. The walk up takes about 30 minutes from the car park.
Chimaera (Yanartaş)
A story
The Chimaera flames have burned continuously for at least 2,500 years — the ancient Greeks attributed them to the breath of a monster with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail. The fires are real: methane and hydrogen seep through fissures in the Lycian rock and ignite on contact with air. They cannot be permanently extinguished. Sailors once used them as a navigation beacon.