Ten Ancient Cities and Landmarks Worth the Drive from Antalya

The one site to see if you only see one. Termessos sits above 1,000 metres inside Güllük Dağı National Park, and the Pisidians who built it were the only people in the region Alexander the Great besieged and then gave up on. The theatre is cut into a saddle between two peaks with a drop straight down one side, and the necropolis above it is a chaos of sarcophagi tipped over by earthquakes. It is a genuine uphill walk of roughly half an hour from the car park, on uneven ground and mostly unshaded.

• Cliff-edge theatre with a view over the Taurus range
• Scattered necropolis of toppled sarcophagi
• Inside a national park – wildlife and pine forest
• Far fewer visitors than the coastal sites

Perge is the easiest of the great cities to reach and the easiest to picture as a working town. A colonnaded street runs the length of the site with a water channel down the middle, still fed today, and you can trace the shops along both sides. The stadium is among the best preserved in Anatolia, and the Roman baths retain their floor levels. Much of the statuary found here now fills the Antalya Museum.

• Colonnaded main street with a central water channel
• Stadium seating for around 12,000
• Hellenistic gate towers and Roman baths
• Flat, easy walking – good with children

Two separate sights sharing a name. The upper falls, north-east of the centre, drop into a pool inside a park, and a path leads behind the curtain of water into a cave – the coolest place in Antalya on an August afternoon. The lower falls are entirely different: the river reaches the end of the plateau and pours straight off the cliff into the Mediterranean. The clifftop park there is open and free.

• Walkable cave behind the upper falls
• Lower falls drop directly into the sea
• Shaded park with cafés at both sites
• Easy to combine with Perge in one morning

The Roman theatre at Aspendos is the most complete anywhere in the Mediterranean – stage building, seating and vaulted entrances all still standing, which is why it is still used for the annual opera and ballet festival rather than roped off. Most visitors stop at the theatre and leave. Walk up the hill behind it and you get the rest of the city: basilica, agora and a long stretch of aqueduct running across the plain.

• The best-preserved Roman theatre in the region
• Still an active performance venue in summer
• Upper city and aqueduct usually deserted
• Roughly 40 minutes from Belek

Sillyon occupies a flat-topped hill rising abruptly out of the farmland, and like Termessos it held out against Alexander. Part of the site slid away in a landslide in the twentieth century, which adds to the strange atmosphere: a Hellenistic gate, a stadium and the ramp of the ancient approach road survive on a plateau where you will often be the only person there. There is no ticket office, no café and very little shade.

• Hellenistic gatehouse and ancient ramp road
• Sweeping view over the Pamphylian plain
• Essentially unvisited – bring your own water
• Rough final track; not for low cars

Side is unusual because the modern town grew up inside the ancient one: you walk between columns to reach a fish restaurant. The Temples of Apollo and Athena stand right at the tip of the peninsula, which makes sunset there genuinely worth timing your day around. The theatre, the largest in Pamphylia, sits behind the main street, and the museum occupies the Roman baths.

• Temple of Apollo on the headland at sunset
• Theatre seating for around 15,000
• Museum inside the restored Roman baths
• Sandy beaches on both sides of the peninsula

The canyon is where the rafting happens, but keep driving. The road crosses a Roman bridge still carrying traffic after eighteen centuries, then climbs through a landscape of eroded rock pillars to the village of Altınkaya, which is built among the ruins of Selge. The theatre stands at the top with the Taurus peaks behind it, and village children will usually appear to sell you herbs. Combining rafting in the morning with Selge in the afternoon makes one of the best days out in the province.

• Roman Oluk Bridge, still in use
• Theatre at 1,000 m surrounded by a living village
• Rafting on the Köprüçay river
• Cool even in high summer

Reached by a forest track above Side, Seleukeia is small, shaded and almost entirely swallowed by pines – which is precisely its appeal after a morning in full sun. The agora, bathhouse and a mosaic-floored building survive at close to their original height because the trees protected them. There is rarely anyone else there, and the walk between the buildings takes place entirely in shade.

• Buildings standing several storeys high
• Shaded throughout – ideal in July and August
• Mosaic floors still in place
• A short detour from Side or Manavgat

Phaselis had three harbours, and all three are still there – you can swim in them. The main street runs from one bay to the next between the theatre and the baths, with pines growing among the stones and the sea visible at both ends. Bring a towel: this is the only ancient city on the coast where the natural thing to do is alternate between the ruins and the water.

• Three ancient harbours, all swimmable
• Paved main street between two bays
• Pine forest running down to the shore
• Theatre with a view of Mount Tahtalı

Olympos is a ruined city inside a river valley, reached along a shaded path that ends on a long pebble beach, with tombs and gateways half hidden in the undergrowth on the way. In the evening, drive round to Yanartaş above Çıralı: natural gas seeping through the rock has been alight here for at least two and a half thousand years, and the ancients read those flames as the breath of the Chimaera. Go after dark, when the flames actually show, and take a torch for the twenty-minute climb.

• Ruins scattered through a river valley to the sea
• Long, quiet pebble beach at Çıralı
• Permanent natural flames on the mountainside
• Best after sunset – bring a torch and proper shoes