Guide
Letoon was the religious centre of Lycia, near Kumluova village in Seydikemer district and about four kilometres from Xanthos. Finds from excavation take the first settlement back to the seventh century BC.
Ovid's myth explains the name. Leto, pregnant by Zeus, bore her twins Artemis and Apollo on Delos, then came to where the Xanthos river reaches the sea and walked up the river as far as the spring where the temple of Leto now stands. Wanting to wash her children there and prevented by the local people, she turned them into frogs.
Three temples stand side by side in the centre of the site. The westernmost is Ionic and belongs to Leto herself; the smaller middle one to Artemis; the easternmost to Apollo.
Two of the things Letoon is known for are no longer on the site. The panel known as the Apollo Mosaic, in the middle of the temple of Apollo, was moved into the display of the Fethiye Archaeological Museum because it lay open to weathering. The Trilingual Inscription — in Lycian, Aramaic and Greek — found in a Hellenistic dump near the temple of Apollo, is also shown at the Fethiye museum.
