Anemurium
Encyclopedia
Anemurium, in modern Turkish Anamur, is a major city of the Roman province of Rough Cilicia, and Roman Catholic titular see
Titular see
A titular see in various churches is an episcopal see of a former diocese that no longer functions, sometimes called a "dead diocese". The ordinary or hierarch of such a see may be styled a "titular bishop", "titular metropolitan", or "titular archbishop"....

 in the former Roman province.

It was situated in Antiquity on a high bluff knob (Cape Anamur) that marks the southernmost point of Asia Minor
Asia Minor
Asia Minor is a geographical location at the westernmost protrusion of Asia, also called Anatolia, and corresponds to the western two thirds of the Asian part of Turkey...

, opposite Cyprus
Cyprus
Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...

.

The ruins of its theatres, tombs and walls are still visible and were first mentioned by Francis Beaufort
Francis Beaufort
Rear-Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort, FRS, FRGS was an Irish hydrographer and officer in Britain's Royal Navy...

, an English naval captain who explored the south coast of Turkey in 1811-12 and who published his discoveries in Karamania. Excavations directed by Professor Elizabeth Alfoldi, University of Toronto (1965–1970), and subsequently James Russell, University of British Columbia (1971-200?), have revealed extensive traces of the city's buildings, tombs and history from the 1st century after Christ until the city's abandonment around 650 when Arab attacks made the coast unsafe. Teams have uncovered a large theatre, a small covered theatre or odeon, several public baths decorated with mosaic floors, four early Christian churches (also with mosaic floors), a civil basilica (law court), sections of the city wall and aqueducts, and a number of minor structures. Work in the city's extensive necropolis of several hundred tombs built above ground has revealed and conserved wall paintings and more mosaic floors. Anemurium had its own mint which produced coins from the late 1st century CE to its capture by the Sassanians in 260, an event that sent the city into decline for many decades.

Source*

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01475c.htm
  • University of British Columbia Archaeology Magazine
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