Kayaköy

Kayaköy, or formerly Levissi, is a well-known neighborhood in the Fethiye district of Muğla.

Kayaköy from each other consists of two very different residential areas. The first of these; Although it is a relatively recent settlement based on slopes, established at the beginning of the 19th century, which also has an important place in tourism, in the last periods of the Ottoman Empire, It is a neighborhood that has reached the size of a town with a population of 3000, whose old name is Livissi. Although the houses were destroyed by the 1957 Fethiye Earthquake, it attracts the attention of tourists with its live museum quality. The other is Kayı Village, which has been mentioned in Ottoman cadastral records since 1512.

There are records of Turkmens belonging to the Kayı tribe of the Oghuzes settled in the region, especially in the cadastral register number 39. There are big and small churches and fourteen chapels among the places to visit in Kayaköy. There is also a pottery workshop (Çömlekhane) next to the small church.

It takes about forty minutes to go to Soğuk Su Bay, which can only be reached by sea or on foot, from the small church road. With the population exchange that took place in 1923, while the Greeks living in Levissi migrated to Greece, immigrants from Thessaloniki and its surroundings settled in Kayaköy.

Discussions continue regarding the more efficient use of the old Kayaköy from a touristic point of view. Yunus Nadi Abalıoğlu (Abalızadelerin Yunus Nadi), founder of Cumhuriyet newspaper and close colleague of Atatürk, was born in Kayaköy in 1880 when his family came here to the plateau.