Byzantine ruins ringing sinkhole
Old names: Kanideli, Carytelis
Festival: Kanlıdivane is used as a one-off venue during the Mersin International Music Festival in May.
At Kanlıdivane, midway between Erdemli and Kızkalesi on the eastern Mediterranean coast, a collection of early Byzantine basilicas cluster together around a dramatic tree-filled sinkhole that must surely have seemed to the ancients like the very gates of hell. It’s a spectacular site, especially if you get it to yourself.
According to most commentators, Kanlıdivane means “Place of Blood” or even “Bloody Place of Madness” and the locals are only too keen to explain how wrongdoers used to be hurled to their deaths in the chasm where wild animals waited to devour them. In reality, the name is probably just a corruption of the ancient Carytelis via the intermediary Kanıdeli, but the sheer isolation of the site and the crowding together of the monuments here makes it immediately obvious that this was somewhere of huge religious significance, more so even than the similar and much better known site of Cennet Cehennem (Heaven and Hell) just along the coast to the west.
Otherwise the only place even vaguely reminiscent of Kanlıdivane is Binbirkilise (1001 Churches) near Karaman, which lacks the added attraction of the crater-like hole.
The chasm is truly mind-boggling, measuring 90m in length by 70m in width and dropping some 60m to the bottom. Today you can only venture a little way inside it, just far enough to be able to make out a rock-cut Roman carving of a family of six people.
There’s a second carving of a solitary soldier further down and visible from the eastern rim; in times gone by it apparently bore an inscription identifying the man as one Trogomes.
Although Kanlıdivane is often described as a town, the impression actually given by the site is of an enormous shrine — something like Lourdes, perhaps — that survived from pagan times into those of early Christianity.
Right beside the parking lot and looming over the chasm stands a three-story Hellenistic tower that bears an inscription linking the chasm to Zeus Olbios, the Greek god worshipped at Olba near Uzuncaburç, above what is now Silifke. But the ruins of four basilicas lining the edge of the chasm suggest that the worship of Zeus segued neatly into the worship of Christ during the course of the fourth century and hung on here at least into the sixth century. Something of the power of the site still lingers even today to judge by a handful of more modern tombs lined up in front of the Second Basilica.
There’s little now to distinguish the four basilicas bar how much still remains of them. The most impressive are the so-called First Basilica, which stands closest to the tower, and the Fourth Basilica, which is also known as the Papylos Church, after the donor whose name still survives in an inscription. This stands right on the edge of the drop and although it presumably once had a wall on the side overlooking the chasm this is now completely lost. It’s tempting to imagine in its place a vast picture window overlooking that immense and frightening breach in the earth.
The basilicas seem to have been simply decorated and today only the crosses on their lintels and a few stone capitals survive. Those in the Papylos Church are by far the finest, resembling ferns gently blowing in the breeze. Records indicate that there was once a fresco of the Four Evangelists here although it is now lost.
Beyond the basilicas more anonymous ruined buildings straggle up the hillside which is surmounted by a striking second-century tomb built for her husband and children by a local woman called Aba to a design that evokes that of a small temple.
Near the ticket office a side road to the left runs past a series of rock-cut tombs with amazing carvings above their entrances. They are said to be very like those at far less accessible Adamkayalar.
Sleeping
The two most obvious bases from which to explore Kanlıdivane are Mersin to the east and Kızkalesi to the west. Mersin is full of business hotels, Kızkalesi of hotels catering to the sun-and-sand brigade. Take your pick.
Transport info
The quickest way to get here is to take a bus from Mersin to the small town of Erdemli, where you can hire a taxi to visit Kanlıdivane (in high summer this may also be possible from Kızkalesi).
Nearby areas
