From Karagöl to Karabel, East of İzmir from a Prehistoric Mound to a Hittite-Era Relief

Starting the day at Karagöl, on top of Mount Yamanlar, means giving the coolest and quietest hour of the route to nature. The lake sits on a level stretch near the summit, at about 850 metres above sea level according to the sources. Its surroundings were declared a nature park in the summer of 2011, and the park covers an area of about nineteen hectares. Since it cannot be reached by public transport, you drive up here on the mountain road from the Karşıyaka side. Keep in mind that there is an entry charge; check the current fee and opening hours with the official sources before you go.

Once you have parked, the first thing to do is to walk the path around the small, round lake once from end to end. Willow trees ring the shore, and ivy climbs the trunks of some of them. Where the willows end, red pine, black pine and cypress take over; the transition is easy to follow as you walk. If you look closely at the water you can pick out submerged plants such as spiked water-milfoil and pondweeds. Carp live in the lake, and the surface of the water is at its stillest in the morning hours. Woodpeckers, chaffinches, blackbirds and nightingales have been recorded in the surrounding forest, so it is a good idea to bring binoculars.

The sources describe the origin of the lake in different ways; the article on Mount Yamanlar presents it as a crater lake, while other sources speak of a lake dammed by a landslide. You can see for yourself in the dark stones along the path that the mountain is made largely of volcanic rock. In ancient mythology Karagöl is associated with Tantalus and his legend, and this is the story most often told about the lake. Because this route is about time, comparing the meaning the legend gives the lake with the real archaeological traces you will see shortly opens the day from a good place.

The park has picnic tables, fountains, a children's playground and a campsite, but on this route we suggest a short walk rather than a picnic. The area gets crowded at weekends; if you want a quiet lakeshore, come early in the morning. The first hours of the morning are also the best time for photographs, because the reflection of the trees falls more sharply on the still water then. In summer it is noticeably cooler up here than in the city, but do not forget a light layer, as the weather on the mountain can change quickly. Inside the forest use only the designated areas and take your rubbish back with you, because the nature park is a protected area.

When you finish the walk around the lake, take a short break and refill your water, because the next stop lies in the heat of the plain. Coming down from here to the Bornova plain is a short drive through the city after the mountain road. Where you are heading are the remains of a real village, far older than the legend of Karagöl.

Source: Wikipedia, Karagöl Tabiat Parkı (İzmir); Wikipedia, Yamanlar Dağı; Hürriyet, Karagöl Tabiat Parkı.

Yeşilova Höyüğü, in the middle of the Bornova plain, is the oldest known settlement in İzmir, and the historical thread of the route begins here. The visitor centre stands in the Karacaoğlan neighbourhood, on the plot right beside the excavation site. The building was built to the design that won a national architecture competition in 2010 and opened to visitors in early 2015. Because the centre's visiting days and hours can change, get up-to-date information before you go from the operating body, the Bornova Municipality.

At the entrance, notice the two different faces of the long, low building. The south-western façade that greets the approaching visitor is opaque, while the north-eastern façade facing the excavation is translucent and hints at the site outside. After the reception hall a long ramp takes you up to the exhibition hall on the first floor, and the main part of the visit takes place on this floor. The exhibition holds replicas of finds from the excavations and sections describing the daily life of the community that lived on the mound.

In the display cases look for flint cutting tools, arrowheads and pieces made of obsidian. According to the excavation director Zafer Derin, the obsidian does not come from this area and was brought from the island of Melos and from Cappadocia. Seals symbolising the sun and loom weights are also among the finds showing that production was organised in a regular way. Fingerprints of children and women found on pieces of clay have been dated to about 8,500 years ago. The excavation team explains that the people of the mound loved mussels and fish, and caught fish with nets weighed down by stones.

The viewing terrace, an extension of the exhibition floor, reaches out towards the excavation site and at the end of the visit brings you face to face with the real remains. As you look out from the terrace, remember why the mound does not look like a hill from outside: the settlement lies beneath the silt of the plain, several metres below today's surface. The mound was found by chance in 2003, thanks to remains noticed in soil that had been carried to a park. Three cultural levels were identified in the excavations; the Neolithic at the bottom, the Chalcolithic above it, and traces of the Bronze Age, the Iron Age and the Roman period at the top. In the last phase of the Neolithic, people lived in separate houses on stone foundations, facing onto a courtyard.

Outside the centre, beside the courtyard, there is a small village setting that recreates the Neolithic settlement. Here, in the time travel programme aimed especially at school groups, participants learn by trying out harvesting, hunting and cooking. Because the programme is organised for groups booked in advance, ask beforehand whether you can join if you are coming on your own. According to a statement by the excavation team in 2020, the site is the only archaeological site holding the barrier-free accessibility flag. The concrete torch in the courtyard is a marker symbolising the Neolithic, lit with real fire on special occasions; frame it together with the excavation site in your photograph.

To cross from here to Kemalpaşa, you take the Ankara road and drive east towards the foothills of Mount Nif. The road passes through the Belkahve Pass, a spur of Mount Nif, and from this pass a large part of the city can be seen.

Source: Wikipedia, Yeşilova Höyüğü; Studio Evren Başbuğ, Yeşilova Höyük Ziyaretçi Merkezi; VOA Türkçe, Yeşilova Höyüğü.

Leaving Yeşilova for the Ankara road and crossing the Belkahve Pass, you come down onto the Kemalpaşa plain, and as you enter the town centre a striped mass of wall rising beside the road greets you. Visit İzmir presents this ruin as the symbol of the district that greets visitors as soon as they set foot in Kemalpaşa. Known locally as Kız Kulesi, the Maiden's Tower, the building is in fact the surviving main block of a palace that the Byzantine emperors had built here. According to the art historian Semavi Eyice's study published in Belleten in 1961, the old name of Kemalpaşa was Nymphaion, and the town lay about 30 kilometres east of İzmir on the ancient road linking İzmir to Sardis. Leave your vehicle in a suitable place in the town centre and walk up to the ruin, because the building stands right beside the main road.

The palace's story begins in 1204. That year the army of the Fourth Crusade captured Constantinople, and several small states were founded on Byzantine territory. The strongest of these was the state ruled by the Laskaris dynasty with its centre at Nicaea, today's İznik; it lasted until Constantinople was recovered in 1261. According to the Byzantine World website, the emperors of this period did not live in a single palace; the court moved between cities according to the season, and Nymphaion became the favourite winter residence. It is not known for certain who built the palace; Eyice writes that the general view is Theodore I Laskaris, the first ruler of the Nicaean state, while an article published at Central European University states that most scholars attribute the building to John III Vatatzes. John III died on 3 November 1254 in a tent set up in the palace garden. The Treaty of Nymphaion, signed here with Genoa on 13 March 1261, secured naval support for the Byzantine recapture of Constantinople that same year. The town passed into Turkish hands in 1315.

Start your visit from a point where you can see the whole building. It is a rectangular block running north to south, about 25 metres long and 11.5 metres wide, and according to Eyice there were originally three more storeys above the basement. Look first at the lower part: the basement is built of large cut stones with slightly rounded outer faces, laid without mortar. Eyice considers this technique typical of the Roman period and thinks the stones were most probably taken from older buildings and reused. At this level the walls are as much as 2 metres thick and give the lower part of the building the look of a fortress. Narrow, loophole-like openings, four on each long facade, lit and ventilated the basement; from outside they look almost like slits.

Then raise your eyes. On the upper floors four or five courses of brick are followed by a course of roughly dressed stone, and the facade takes on a striped red and white look. Inside, the windows open in the middle of arched niches. According to Julia Jedamski's article, the best-preserved facade is the western one, and on its first floor a double window sits between two single windows. At the corner of the building, look for a small decoration made of bricks set upright within the stone course where the first floor begins. According to Eyice, this decoration is confined to that small area; the builders had started to apply the facade ornament of the period and then gave it up, perhaps because they could not find the material, perhaps because they had to finish the work quickly. On the wall surfaces you can still follow the zigzag traces of an internal ramp, covered by a brick vault, that connected the floors. Scholars compare this plan with the Tekfur Palace in Istanbul, since both are multi-storey residences with massive basements and coloured facades.

For photographs, the timing of this route works in your favour. In the afternoon the sun turns to the western facade, and the difference in colour between brick and stone is at its clearest in those hours. A steel canopy stands over the ruin to protect it from the rain; set up your frame a little further back so that it takes this in too. According to Turkish Wikipedia, restoration work on the building began in December 2011. Because of conservation work the surroundings may be fenced and the interior may be closed to visitors, so check the current situation with the Municipality of Kemalpaşa. Do not climb the walls and do not touch loose stones. If you like, also look from a distance at the remains of the Byzantine castle on the hill south of the town; according to Jedamski there are remains of towers, walls and a gate there.

There is also a small piece of history linking this stop to the next. Eyice reports that around 1883, while he was in İzmir, Edwin Freshfield set out to see the Hittite relief at Karabel, took an interest in this ruin as his route passed through Nif, and identified it as the palace of the emperors of Nicaea. Follow in his footsteps: after the palace, turn from Kemalpaşa onto the Torbalı road, and a short drive past the foothills of Mount Nif to the south brings you to the Karabel Pass.

Source: Belleten, Semavi Eyice, Laskarisler Sarayı; Central European University, Jedamski, Nymphaion; Byzantine World, Palace of Nymphaion; Visit İzmir, Kemalpaşa.

The Karabel Pass is a narrow pass on the road between Kemalpaşa and Torbalı, opening between Mount Nif and the eastward stretch of the Bozdağlar range. The rock relief on the slope of the pass is one of the oldest historical remains in the Aegean Region, and it is the last and most thought-provoking stop on this route. The relief lies in a niche on the south-facing slope of a hill, reached by steps leading up from the road. Stopping at the roadside calls for care because of traffic, so leave your vehicle in a safe place and walk to the steps.

The figure carved into the niche is about 2.5 metres high and 1.5 metres wide. The warrior striding to the right holds a bow in one hand and a spear in the other, and between his head and the spear there is a three-line inscription in Luwian hieroglyphs. The inscription is badly worn and hard to make out with the naked eye. As the angle of the light changes the worn lines read differently, so look at it from different angles for a few minutes. According to David Hawkins's reading of 1998, the inscription names the figure as Tarkasnawa, king of the land of Mira. Mira was a western Anatolian kingdom subject to the Hittite Empire in the 13th century BC. The inscription gives the name Alantalli as Tarkasnawa's father; the grandfather's name cannot be read, but other documents suggest he may have been Kupanta-Kurunta.

The ancient historian Herodotus attributed similar rock carvings in Ionia to the Egyptian pharaoh Sesostris, and Karabel is thought to be possibly one of the monuments in that account. The French traveller Charles Texier saw the relief in 1839, and the travellers who followed him long regarded it as an Egyptian work. In 1843 Heinrich Kiepert compared the relief with the carvings at Yazılıkaya and showed its link to the Hittite world. Local people call the relief Eti Baba.

About a hundred metres north of the relief there were a second relief and two more inscriptions, and these were lost during road works between 1977 and 1982. The relief you see today is not intact either, because treasure hunters have damaged it again and again over the years. According to press reports, acid was poured over it in 2016, and in 2019 it was broken up with drilling tools. The Kültür Envanteri record states that the lower half of the figure has been almost entirely destroyed. So when you stand in front of the monument, you are looking not only at a work of art but also at a warning that shows why protection matters. Do not touch the rock, and do not try to enter the niche or clean its surface. A tile-decorated arch once stood on the road to mark the site of the monument, but it was demolished when the road was widened.

After seeing the monument, you can move on to the nearby Karabel Picnic Area and end the day resting. The picnic area lies inside a forest of red pine and stone pine of about 20 hectares, and besides the picnic grounds there are walking paths. Birds such as the woodchat shrike, the northern wheatear and the blue tit are seen in the forest. Wild boar, golden jackal and fox are also counted among the residents of this forest. For the return you can go down towards Torbalı and join the motorway, or drive back the way you came via Kemalpaşa to İzmir.

Source: Kültür Envanteri, Karabel Anıtı; Wikipedia, Karabel Geçidi; Hürriyet, Karabel kabartması; Visit İzmir, Karabel Mesire Alanı.