Beydağları

Beydağları Coastal National Park, also called Olympos-Beydağları, was declared in 1972 in Antalya province and protects some 314 km² combining a stretch of Mediterranean coast with the western Taurus mountains that overlook it, up to Tahtalı, which rises above 2,360 metres and falls almost directly to the sea.

The vegetation is tiered from the Mediterranean scrub and pine woods of the coast up to cedar of Lebanon and Taurus fir at altitude, and the rocky coves and shingle beaches hold loggerhead turtle nests. The Mediterranean monk seal, one of the most threatened species in the sea, survives in these waters.

The park has a notable archaeological heritage. Within it are the ruins of Olympos, a Lycian and later Roman city set in a wooded valley beside the sea, and above them the Yanartaş, or Chimaera: a set of flames that issue permanently from cracks in the rock through the natural seepage of methane and have been burning for millennia. That phenomenon inspired the myth of the Chimaera, the fire-breathing monster that Bellerophon brought down from the back of Pegasus, and the ancients kept a sanctuary there. A stretch of the Lycian Way, Turkey's best-known long-distance path, also runs through the park.