Anemurium

Anemurium, in modern Turkish Anamur, is a major city of the Roman province of Rough Cilicia, and Roman Catholic titular see 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, opposite Cyprus.

The ruins of its theatres, tombs and walls are still visible and were first mentioned by Francis Beaufort, 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 (1971-2000?), along with his distinguished colleague and former student E. Hector Williams and his wife Caroline, 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 theater, a small covered theater 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*

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert Appleton Company.  [1]
• University of British Columbia Archaeology Magazine