Kayaköy
A hillside town of empty stone houses near Fethiye, left behind after the 1923 population exchange.
The Turkish name
Kayaköy
At a glance
- Province
- Muğla, Fethiye
- Old name
- Livissi
- Emptied
- 1923 population exchange
Read more
Kayaköy, Fethiye on Vikipedi ↗
This page was written from these sources.
- Kayaköy ↗Wikipedia · Checked 2026-09-23
The story
Kayaköy, once the Greek town of Livissi (also written Levissi), climbs a hillside about 8 km south of Fethiye. Its Greek Orthodox population, some three thousand people in late Ottoman times, left in the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Türkiye, and migrants from around Thessaloniki were settled in their place.
The 1957 Fethiye earthquake ruined the houses and the town was abandoned. Today its roofless stone houses, a large and a small church and fourteen chapels make it an open-air ghost town. It is thought to have inspired the village in Louis de Bernières' novel Birds Without Wings.
