Some of the flames at Yanartaş, the rocky hillside near Çıralı in Antalya where, as the report put it, fire has burned for thousands of years, have gone out, the Demirören News Agency (DHA) reported on Sunday.
According to the report, observations in recent days show that fire no longer comes out of some of the points where it used to burn, while flames are still rising from other cracks in the rock. It is not yet known why some of the flames died out, or whether the change is temporary. The report gave no number for how many flame points were affected, and it quoted no official from the national park or the ministry.
A stop on the Lycian Way
Yanartaş lies in the Kemer district of Antalya, inside the boundaries of Beydağları Coastal National Park, which is run by the Agriculture and Forestry Ministry’s nature conservation and national parks authority. The site is on the route of the Lycian Way long-distance hiking trail.
DHA said most visitors are foreign tourists. Hikers on the Lycian Way often stop to photograph the flames, and some visitors roast marshmallows over them. For the latest visitor numbers for the province, see our report on Antalya’s foreign arrivals in the first nine months of 2026.
Natural gas and the Chimaera legend
In 2017, Prof. Fuzuli Yağmurlu of Süleyman Demirel University’s engineering faculty told DHA that the flames come from a natural gas leak, and that the gas may first have been set alight in ancient times by lightning or by people. The DHA report also cited research by Giuseppe Etiope and Artur Ionescu, whose experiments showed that methane can form at low temperatures in the presence of a ruthenium catalyst, without any biological source, as one possible explanation for how the gas forms in rocks like these.
The flames are also tied to Greek mythology. Citing the Culture and Tourism Ministry’s Culture Portal, the report said the hillside is linked to the Chimera, a fire-breathing creature. In the legend, the hero Bellerophon, riding the winged horse Pegasus, defeats and buries the Chimera, but its flames keep burning, and these are believed to be the fires of Yanartaş.
According to the same story, athletes lit torches at Yanartaş and ran with them to nearby Olympos for a race held to celebrate Bellerophon’s victory. The Culture Portal describes this as the first example of Olympic games in Anatolia, which is why Yanartaş is sometimes called the site of the "first Olympic flame".
Anyone planning a visit should check conditions locally, as the report did not say whether access to the site has changed. For more on the area and what life in the province is like, see our guide to living in Antalya. Entry fees at state-run sites are also changing; see our report on museum and site ticket prices for 2027.
Sources
Photo: Aleh Tsikhanau / Unsplash License, via Unsplash
