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Birds, Bathonea and Yarımburgaz on the Shore of Lake Küçükçekmece
Cultural

Birds, Bathonea and Yarımburgaz on the Shore of Lake Küçükçekmece

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To the west of Istanbul, about fifteen kilometres from the city centre, there is a large body of water tied to the Sea of Marmara by a strip of sand.

Küçükçekmece, İstanbul
Cultural
Radar Editör
September 30, 2026

About Trip

To the west of Istanbul, about fifteen kilometres from the city centre, there is a large body of water tied to the Sea of Marmara by a strip of sand. Lake Küçükçekmece is called a lake, but it is really a lagoon: a shallow coastal barrier formed by sand and gravel carried along the shore cut an old bay off from the sea, while a narrow channel left at the eastern end still keeps the lake connected to the Marmara. That is why its water is neither fully fresh nor fully salty. Someone walking along its shore can, on the same day, see birds on a migration route, the excavation site of a Roman harbour town, the mouth of a cave counted among the oldest settlements in Europe, a public beach and a stone bridge from the sixteenth century. This article describes that walk; since neither the excavation site nor the cave is open to regular visits, it also tells you how to see both from outside, from the shore and from the road.

Getting there

The easiest way to reach the seaward shore of the lake is by Marmaray; from Küçükçekmece station you go down to the Menekşe shore and the bridge on foot or with a short bus ride. According to Wikipedia, the old Menekşe railway station right next to the shore was taken out of service with the Marmaray project, so the stop where you get off is Küçükçekmece. The Bathonea excavation site is on the far side of the lake, on the Firuzköy peninsula in Avcılar; Yarımburgaz Cave lies to the north of the lake, on the Altınşehir side of Başakşehir. Küçükçekmece Municipality notes that the district is bounded by the D100 and TEM motorways; anyone who wants to see all three points in a single day needs a car or bus connections, so check the route numbers on the İBB public transport planner.

Sea or lake

Turkish Wikipedia gives the area of the lake as 16 square kilometres, its greatest length as 10 and its greatest width as 6 kilometres, and its deepest point as 22 metres; the water surface is at sea level. In their article in the Grand History of Istanbul, Şengül Aydıngün and Ahmet Emre Bilgili explain that the lake began as a bay of the Marmara and turned into a lagoon when a narrow coastal barrier gradually formed at its entrance. Streams such as Nakkaşdere, Sazlıdere and Eşkinoz feed the lake; the municipality's location page adds that these streams have an irregular regime. Because seawater enters through the channel, the salinity changes with the season and the rainfall. English Wikipedia writes that the lake has been seriously polluted by rapid urbanisation and industry; for swimming, people use the Menekşe shore right next to it rather than the lakeshore. The lake spreads across four districts: Küçükçekmece, Avcılar, Bakırköy and Başakşehir.

Home of birds

Lake Küçükçekmece lies on a bird migration route and, according to English Wikipedia, is registered by BirdLife as an Important Bird Area; the pygmy cormorant and the great cormorant are among the species observed here. In October 2020 Küçükçekmece Municipality published a 304 page book titled "Küçükçekmece, Home of Birds"; according to the municipality's announcement the book presents the 166 bird species seen on the lake, its author is Süreyya İsfendiyaroğlu, the photographs are by Prof. Dr. Ahmet Karataş and its editor is Oktay Uludağ. An article published by Hürriyet in the same days highlights a few of the species: the bearded reedling is seen at every time of year, the common pochard is one of the most frequently seen ducks in winter and in 2016 eleven percent of its population in Turkey was counted on this lake, the great crested grebe breeding in the reed beds is increasing in number, and in recent years around sixty flamingos have begun to appear on the lake. The municipality announces that it plans to build a bird observatory in the İç Kumsal area of Fatih Mahallesi; until the observatory opens, bring your binoculars and stand quietly in the reedy stretches of the shore. The winter months are the most rewarding period for waterbirds; to avoid disturbing the birds, do not enter the reeds, watch from the shore.

Bathonea, the harbour on the lakeshore

On the northwestern shore of the lake, on the Firuzköy peninsula belonging to Avcılar, an excavation has been under way for more than fifteen years. In the 1930s the Swiss archaeologist Ernest Mamboury linked the remains here to the town of Rhegion. The work that began with a surface survey in 2007 under the direction of Prof. Dr. Şengül Aydıngün of Kocaeli University turned into an excavation in 2009 with the permission of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism; the excavation's official website states that the work is carried out by the Ministry and the Archaeology Department of Kocaeli University. The name Bathonea given to the settlement was, according to the article in the Grand History of Istanbul, proposed by Semavi Eyice; it derives from Bathynias, meaning "deep river", a name found in ancient sources, and on the 12th century map of Idrisi the region was written as "Batira". English Wikipedia reminds us that this name does not appear in any ancient source, that the label "lost city" is exaggerated, and that the settlement may have been a unit attached to Byzantion or Rhegion; in other words, the name is an interpretation, while the finds are real.

And the finds really are remarkable. According to the article and a 2023 report by Anadolu Agency, digging takes place in three separate areas on the peninsula. In one there is a small harbour with two quays a hundred metres apart, an ancient road paved with stone and marble, a rectangular pool of 5 by 7 metres and an area thought to have been a fish market. In the second, a monumental open cistern measuring 100 by 20 metres with a capacity of seven thousand cubic metres, underground water channels and stamped bricks dated to the reign of Constantine I and his sons (324-337) were found. In the third, the triangular Great Harbour and an ancient lighthouse structure left under the water came to light. Turkish Wikipedia describes this lighthouse as the second ancient lighthouse found in Turkey after Patara; it also mentions a palace complex with mosaic floors. In the report Aydıngün defines Bathonea as a harbour settlement that served first Byzantion and then Constantinople. The oldest layer in the excavation is not Roman: according to the article, naviform blade tools dated to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period (7500-6000 BC) were found on the lakeshore, and the authors regard these as the earliest evidence of the pre-pottery Neolithic on European soil. According to Turkish Wikipedia, the 2009 finds entered the Archaeological Institute of America's list of the ten most important discoveries of the year.

Bathonea has not been arranged as an archaeological park; the team works during the excavation season, and outside the season the site is closed and nobody goes in. From the shore road on the Firuzköy side you can see from a distance the point of the peninsula reaching into the lake and the area where the quays stand; looking from the Menekşe side, you can make out the silhouette of the peninsula on the opposite shore. The excavation's official website shares publications and news; look there before you go.

Yarımburgaz, the oldest home inside the rock

About a kilometre and a half north of the lake, on the Altınşehir side of Başakşehir, two cave mouths appear one above the other on a slope of Eocene limestone. According to Wikipedia the lower cave is 500 metres long and the upper cave 52 metres; the lower mouth lies at 11.5 metres and the upper mouth at 18.5 metres above sea level. English Wikipedia writes that the cave was formed by an underground stream hollowing out the limestone. The first investigations were made by Abdullah Bey in 1869-70; the first archaeological excavation was Şevket Aziz Kansu's in 1959, followed by Istanbul University's rescue excavation in 1986 and, in 1988-1990, the joint excavation of Istanbul University and Berkeley, with Güven Arsebük, F. Clark Howell and Steven Kuhn on the team. The excavations produced stone tools of the Middle Pleistocene and more than five thousand fossil bones, most of them, according to English Wikipedia, belonging to bears. In the upper cave, Chalcolithic pottery used from 5500 BC onwards was found; these finds show the connection between the Balkans, the Aegean and Anatolia and entered the archaeological literature as the "Yarımburgaz Culture". Sources give different figures for the age of the cave: Turkish Wikipedia speaks of 400 thousand years, English Wikipedia of layers 250 to 180 thousand years old, Anadolu Agency's 2022 report of 600 thousand and the Grand History of Istanbul of 800 thousand years. What is certain is that this is one of the oldest known settlements in Turkey and is counted on the route of Homo erectus from Africa into Europe.

The cave's next layer is Byzantine: a church was carved into the walls, a monastery was built in front of the mouth, and the inner walls were decorated with frescoes. What came afterwards is, unfortunately, a history of destruction. English Wikipedia recounts that the floor was levelled with a grader for mushroom growing, that treasure hunters dug pits, and that from 1971 onwards numerous film and television shoots damaged the frescoes and the deposits; in 2018 the Istanbul branch of the Archaeologists' Association announced that the cave's railings had been cut and its interior left neglected. The cave was declared a first degree archaeological and natural site in 2001; its finds are displayed at the Istanbul Archaeological Museums. According to Anadolu Agency's January 2022 report, a team from the Archaeology Department of Kocaeli University and the Turkish Caving Federation reached new galleries about a kilometre deep that had not been mapped and whose stalactites are intact; the aim is to open the cave to visitors together with the Ministry in the way that causes the least damage. For now the cave is not open to regular visits, and going inside is both forbidden and dangerous. From the road on the Altınşehir side you can see and photograph the two mouths on the slope and the flat ground in front of them from outside; do not go beyond the railings.

The Menekşe shore and the bridge

On either side of the channel where the lake opens to the Marmara stand the two best known places in the district. Menekşe Beach is in the İç Kumsal area of Fatih Mahallesi; according to Wikipedia it has a 630 metre stretch of shore, is maintained by the İBB and is open to the public. It is a shore where people swim in the summer months and come for walks and the sunset in the other seasons; because the mouth of the channel is here, you can see with your own eyes the exchange of water between the lake and the sea. The Küçükçekmece Bridge crossing the channel dates from the sixteenth century. According to the entry in the TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam, the bridge is 210 metres long and 7.6 metres wide, and its central arch has a span of 10 metres; there was an earlier bridge on the same spot in the reign of Justinian. Turkish Wikipedia writes that construction began in the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent and was completed under Selim II. Its architect is disputed: the İBB Cultural Heritage page calls it the "Küçükçekmece Mimar Sinan Bridge" but also reports that some researchers attribute it to Acem Ali of Tabriz, the chief architect before Sinan; the TDV entry likewise notes Orhan Bozkurt's observation that the bridge does not appear in the lists of Sinan's works. The bridge stood on the Roman Via Egnatia, the route linking Istanbul to Rumelia. It was repaired in 1498-99, 1735-36 and 1861-62 and was widened and its gradient flattened during the First World War; according to the Küçükçekmece District Governorship, a thirteenth arch unknown until then came to light in the restoration begun by the İBB in 2005. The governorship gives the length as 227 metres; the difference may depend on where the measurement starts. Looking down at the channel from the parapet of the bridge is the easiest way to understand why the lake counts as a lagoon.

Suggested walk and practical notes

  • In the morning get off at Marmaray's Küçükçekmece station and walk first to the bridge, then to the Menekşe shore; follow the shore round to the lake side and watch the birds in the reedy stretches.
  • For Bathonea you need to cross to Firuzköy in Avcılar, and for Yarımburgaz to Altınşehir in Başakşehir; both can be seen from outside, neither can be entered.
  • Bring binoculars, a hat and water; most of the shore is without shade and windy.
  • The bird book is a municipal publication, and the bird observatory is a planned project; check the municipality's page for its opening.
  • The season and hours of the beach and the shore facilities change; check the current information on the İBB's pages.

Sources

Location - Birds, Bathonea and Yarımburgaz on the Shore of Lake Küçükçekmece

Trip Info
CityKüçükçekmece, İstanbul
TypeCultural
DateSeptember 30, 2026
SourceRadar Editör
Radar TürkiyeAuthorRadar TürkiyeVisit SourceGet Directions