Until 1923, Kayaköy, aka Levissi, was a thriving village with a population of several thousand people. Today it is a ghost town of deserted houses, shops, schools and churches.

First inhabited around 3,000 BC, as the ancient city of Carmylessus, it had at its height a population of about 20,000 people, and remained an important trading city until 1100 AD.

Built on the site of Carmylessus in the 18th century,  Kayaköy, or Karmylassos, as it was called in Greek, had been continually inhabited since at least the 13th century. Turks and Greeks had lived together there since the 1st century BC, with the Turks maintaining the fields and the Greeks provided the trades and craftsmen.

After the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922, Greek residents were resettled in a poor suburb outside Athens. In exchange, Turks were brought from Northern Greece to Kayaköy, but, unaccustomed to the climate and living conditions, moved to other parts of Turkey within the first year, leaving the place abandoned.

About 400 ruined stone houses climb the hillside along cobbled streets. They are positioned so as not to overshadow one another and to allow each to have a view over the valley. Scattered among the houses are numerous chapels, a school, a customs house and two large churches, one with its ceiling still displaying the faint outline of frescoes. Any timber in the buildings has either been removed or rotted away, and vegetation grows inside.

Today Kayaköy exists as an open air museum. Each year many of the descendants of those Greeks  expelled in 1923 return for a ceremony of remembrance and reconciliation.