Its ruins are located south of the modern town Çıralı in the Kumluca district of Antalya Province, southwestern Turkey.

A wall and an inscription on a sarcophagus have been dated to the end of the 4th century BC, so Olympus must have been founded at the latest in the Hellenistic period.

At this point Cilician pirates under Zekenites had taken control of Olympus's Mediterranean possessions, which included Corycus, Phaselis and many other places in Pamphylia.

[4] His rule ended in 78 BC, when the Roman commander Publius Servilius Isauricus, accompanied by the young Julius Caesar, captured Olympus and its other territories after a victory at sea.

Today the site attracts tourists, not only for the artifacts that can still be found (though fragmentary and widely scattered), but also for its scenic landscapes supporting wild grapevines, flowering oleander, bay trees, figs and pines.

[citation needed] Olympus became a Christian bishopric, a suffragan of the metropolitan see of Myra, the capital of the Roman province of Lycia.

Anatolius was a signatory of the joint letter that the bishops of Lycia sent in 458 to Byzantine Emperor Leo I the Thracian regarding the murder of Proterius of Alexandria.