Muğla’s ancient cities attract over a million visitors

MUĞLA

Museums and ancient sites in the southwestern province of Muğla welcomed nearly 1.3 million visitors in 2025, according to provincial culture and tourism officials.

Known primarily as a holiday destination for its natural beauty and unspoiled bays, Muğla is also home to a vast cultural heritage, with numerous ancient cities and archaeological sites included on UNESCO’s Tentative World Heritage List. The remains of Carian and Lycian civilizations, alongside later Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Menteşe and Ottoman-period traces, continue to attract strong interest from both local and foreign tourists.

The province is often described as an open-air museum of the Aegean region, hosting hundreds of archaeological sites, including Beçin Castle, Kayaköy, Lagina, Stratonikeia, Kaunos, Knidos, Euromos, Labranda, Herakleia, Hyllarima and Tlos, as well as the tomb of the Carian ruler Hecatomnus in Milas and its surrounding finds.

Visitors to Muğla increasingly combine sea-sun holidays with cultural tourism, touring ancient cities and museums where artifacts unearthed through ongoing excavations are on display.

Provincial Director of Culture and Tourism Hüseyin Toprak told state-run Anadolu Agency that Muğla was founded in a region once ruled by major ancient civilizations such as Caria and Lycia.

“Muğla has an extremely important cultural heritage,” Toprak said. “Türkiye is very rich in archaeological finds and excavations, and Muğla and Antalya are at the forefront in this field.”

He said there are more than 1,000 ancient settlements across the province, with archaeological excavations currently under way at 25 sites. Twelve of these are being conducted year-round under the Culture and Tourism Ministry’s “Heritage for the Future” project.

Year-round excavations boost interest

Under the project, excavations that previously lasted only a few months now continue throughout the year, Toprak said, creating employment while also significantly boosting tourism potential.

“In the past, visitor numbers to these sites were always below one million,” he said. “Thanks to intensive excavation work and promotional efforts by the Türkiye Tourism Promotion and Development Agency, curiosity and interest have grown rapidly. This year, we hosted around 1.3 million visitors, and this figure is expected to increase further.”

Toprak said the project also offers a major opportunity to extend the tourism season to 12 months, adding that new archaeological discoveries are attracting growing international academic interest.

Bodrum leads museum visits

According to Toprak, around 1.3 million people visited five museums and multiple excavation sites across Muğla last year. The Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology, located within Bodrum Castle, was the most visited museum, followed by Marmaris Museum.

Among ancient sites, Knidos in Datça ranked first, while the Kayaköy archaeological site, often referred to as a “ghost village,” came second.

Toprak noted that the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology is Türkiye’s only museum dedicated exclusively to underwater archaeology and also boasts the world’s richest collection in this field. He added that nighttime museum visits, launched for the first time at Bodrum Castle with the approval of the Culture and Tourism Ministry, have drawn particularly strong interest.

He also said large numbers of visitors continue to tour major sites such as Stratonikeia and Lagina in Yatağan, Beçin, Labranda, Euromos and Herakleia in Milas, Kaunos in Köyceğiz and Knidos in Datça.