Xanthos-Letoon
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How it came to be
Xanthos was the leading city of Lycia, and the Greek geographer Strabo called it the largest in the region. According to Herodotus, when the Persian general Harpagus besieged it around 540 BC the Lycians burned their citadel, killed their wives, children and slaves and made a final suicidal attack. Brutus besieged the city again in 42 BC, and only 150 men are said to have survived.
About 4 km to the south-west, the Letoon was the Lycian sanctuary of Leto, with three temples to Leto and her children Artemis and Apollo. In 1973 a stele of 337 BC was found near the temple of Apollo, inscribed in Lycian, Greek and Aramaic. The temple of Leto was reassembled on its original site between 2000 and 2007.
The Nereid Monument at Xanthos is held to have directly influenced the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. The two sites were inscribed together in 1988.
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