Four days in Antalya: two Roman cities that would be famous in Italy

Three nights in Kaleiçi, mornings out at Perge and Aspendos before the heat, and afternoons back down at the old harbour.

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Length
4 days, 3 nights
Where you stay
Antalya
Places
10 across 4 days
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Most people arrive in Antalya on the way to somewhere else, a hotel strip up the coast or a boat out of the marina, and never look at the city. That is a mistake worth ten minutes of your planning: the old town inside the walls is one of the best preserved in Turkey, and within an hour's drive there are two Roman cities in a state of preservation that would make either of them famous if they stood in Italy.

The city was founded by Attalos II of Pergamon in the 2nd century BC as a naval base, on the only decent harbour along a long and exposed coast. Rome, the Seljuks and the Ottomans each took it in turn, all of them building over the last lot, and the result is a walled quarter of narrow lanes, wooden Ottoman houses, a Roman gate and a Seljuk minaret, dropped on top of a cliff above the Mediterranean.

The mountains come almost to the sea here, which is why the beaches are backed by a wall of rock and why the ruins inland are so undisturbed. It also means the heat sits in the bay from June to September, so the shape of a good day here is a Roman site at eight in the morning and the water at five in the afternoon.

Highlights

  • A marble triple gateway built for the emperor Hadrian's visit, still the way into the old town
  • The theatre at Aspendos, complete enough that its stage wall still stands and concerts still use it
  • The colonnaded street at Perge, with a water channel running along its centre
  • The sculpture halls of the Antalya Museum, where most of what was found at Perge ended up
  • Sunset from the Roman tower on the cliff edge, with the mountains going pink across the bay

Where to stay

Antalya, three nights

Antalya is the fifth largest city in Turkey, and almost none of that is visible from the old town. Kaleiçi is a small triangle of lanes inside the surviving walls, running down to a horseshoe harbour that was the Roman one, and it is entirely walkable.

Everything else is spread along a coastal plain that ends in mountains within a few kilometres. The plain was Pamphylia in antiquity, wealthy from farming and trade, and studded with cities: Perge, Aspendos, Side and Termessos are all within an hour or so of the modern city.

St Paul came ashore here and walked inland; Ibn Battuta stopped in 1331 and described a town divided into separate walled quarters for Christians, Greeks, Jews and the court. Antalya has been used to visitors for a very long time.

Day by day

Day 1 in Antalya

Hadrian's gate, the fluted minaret and the tower on the cliff

The old town takes an afternoon and asks nothing of you but comfortable shoes. Start at the Roman gate on the landward side, which is where the walls open into the lanes, and work down through them towards the water.

The lanes wander, and it does not matter; everything runs downhill to the harbour eventually. Antique shops, carpet dealers and courtyard cafes fill the ground floors of the old wooden houses, and the further from the gate you get the fewer of them there are.

Finish on the cliff edge at the far corner, where a Roman tower stands above the sea and the whole bay lines up for sunset.

  1. 15:00

    Hadrian's Gate

    Other

    Three marble arches put up for the emperor Hadrian's visit in 130 AD, buried inside the city wall for centuries and dug out again, which is why it survives so completely. Look down at the rutted paving under the middle arch: those are Roman cart tracks, worn into the stone.

  2. 16:00

    Fluted Minaret Mosque

    Religious

    The fluted brick minaret of 1230 is the symbol of the city and stands 38 m over the old town, built under Seljuk rule on the site of an earlier church. The six-domed mosque beside it was rebuilt in 1373, and the walled ground around it holds a dervish lodge and a set of tombs.

  3. 18:30

    Hıdırlık Tower

    Architecture

    A Roman bastion of the 2nd century AD on the cliff at the southwest corner of the old town, square below and round above, probably a lighthouse and possibly a tomb. The park around it is where the whole city comes for sunset, and on the night of 5 May it fills up for Hıdırellez, the spring festival that gave the tower its Turkish name.

With more time: The cliff path from the tower runs west above the sea for a couple of kilometres to the Konyaaltı beach, past tea gardens built into the rock face. It is a good walk after dinner, and the tram runs back.

Day 2 in Antalya

Perge in the morning, the falls at Lara, and its statues in the museum

Perge is twenty minutes east and needs to be done early, because there is no shade in it and the site is large. It was a wealthy Pamphylian city at its peak in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD, and enough survives to walk its main street from the gate to the fountain at the far end.

On the way back, stop where the Düden stream drops off the cliff into the sea. Then spend the hot part of the afternoon in the museum, which is where nearly everything anybody has ever dug up at Perge now stands.

That order matters. Seeing the empty pedestals in the morning and the statues that stood on them after lunch is much better than the reverse.

  1. 08:00

    Perge

    Historic

    A Roman city laid out on a grand scale: a colonnaded main street with a water channel running down its centre, a stadium that held twelve thousand, a theatre, baths, an agora and the round towers of the old Hellenistic gate. Paul the Apostle preached here on his first journey. Two hours, and take a hat.

  2. 11:30

    Düden Lower Waterfalls

    Visit

    The lower falls of the Düden, where the stream that has run underground across the plain comes out of a cliff and drops straight into the sea. There is a park above it to look down from, and boats run out from the marina to see it from the water, which is the better angle.

  3. 15:00

    Antalya Museum

    Historic

    One of the largest museums in the country, and the reason Perge feels empty: room after room of statues, sarcophagi and mosaics lifted from the sites along this coast, with the gods and emperors from Perge's theatre making up the finest hall. Some five thousand pieces are on show and roughly five times as many are in store.

With more time: The museum sits at the western end of the heritage tram line, five minutes from Konyaaltı beach. Bring a towel and swim afterwards; the water is clear and the mountains behind it are the view.

Day 3 in Antalya

Aspendos and a waterfall on the way home

The theatre at Aspendos is the best preserved Roman theatre in the eastern Mediterranean and the reason to give up a morning to a drive of three quarters of an hour. Its stage building still stands to full height, roof and all, which almost nowhere else can claim.

Most visitors see the theatre and leave. The rest of the city is up the hill behind it, largely unvisited, with an aqueduct running across the valley that was engineered to push water uphill through a pair of siphon towers.

Come back through the pine woods to the north for a swim in cold water, and be back in Antalya for dinner in the harbour.

  1. 08:30

    Aspendos

    Historic

    A Roman theatre of the 2nd century AD, seating around seven thousand, complete enough that it was used as a caravanserai in Seljuk times and is still used for concerts now. Climb to the top row and then walk up behind the site to the basilica, agora and stadium, and out to the 2 km aqueduct with its siphon towers, which is a piece of engineering worth the extra half hour.

  2. 12:30

    Lunch at a roadside trout place

    Eat

    The road back passes several riverside restaurants with trout tanks and tables set out over the water. They are aimed at Turkish families rather than tour buses, and they are cheap.

  3. 14:30

    Kurşunlu Waterfall

    Nature

    A wooded canyon north of the city where a stream drops through a series of pools, with a firm but steep path along the best of them and a cafe at the top. It is at its best in spring; by late summer the flow can be down to a trickle.

With more time: In June and July the theatre at Aspendos hosts an opera and ballet festival, and seeing something staged in a Roman theatre at night with the acoustics working exactly as designed is a better evening than anything in town. Tickets go on sale in spring.

Day 4 in Antalya

The old harbour and the mosque with the broken minaret

Keep the last morning inside the walls. The harbour below the old town is the reason Antalya exists, a small horseshoe of water at the foot of the cliff that held the fleet of Attalos and now holds gulets and dive boats.

Walk back up through the lanes to the strangest building in the old town, a Roman temple that has been a church, a mosque, a ruin and a mosque again, with the burnt stump of a minaret beside it.

Then the tram to the airport, which takes about an hour from the middle of town.

  1. 09:00

    Harbour piers

    Visit

    The old harbour is reached by a ramp that switchbacks down the cliff from the old town, and it is worth going down even if you are not taking a boat. Day trips run out along the coast to the caves and the falls, most of them leaving between nine and ten and coming back in the late afternoon.

  2. 11:00

    Sehzade Korkut Mosque

    Religious

    Built as a Roman temple in the 2nd century AD, converted to a church, then to a mosque under the Seljuks, who added the minaret in the 13th century. A fire in 1800 left only that minaret standing, cut off short, which is what the locals still call the place. The rest of it was rebuilt between 2018 and 2021, so you can now walk through all four of its lives in one building.

  3. 13:00

    Tram to the airport

    Travel

    Tram 1A marked Havalimanı goes out to the domestic terminal in about fifty minutes; if you are flying internationally, allow for the shuttle between the two terminals at the far end.

With more time: With half a day more, Termessos is the one to add: a mountain city forty minutes northwest that Alexander decided not to besiege, with a theatre on a ledge above a gorge. It is a steep climb through pine forest and it is the most spectacular ruin in the region.

Before you go

Getting there and around

Antalya's airport has flights from most of Europe and daily domestic services from Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir. The two terminals sit 1.6 km apart with a shuttle between them; the tram only serves the domestic terminal, so allow for the transfer if you land on an international flight.

The AntRay tram runs from the airport into the centre in about fifty minutes for around a euro, paid contactless with a bank card. Get off at İsmetpaşa for the old town, or change there onto the heritage line, a set of 1950s and 60s tramcars given to the city by Nuremberg, which trundles along the cliff to the museum.

For Perge, Aspendos and the waterfalls, the choice is a hire car, a taxi with a wait, or one of the many minibus tours. Public buses go near the sites but not to them, and the last stretch on foot in August is not a good idea.

Where to stay

Kaleiçi, the walled old town, is the obvious base: restored Ottoman houses turned into small hotels, courtyards with orange trees, and everything except the ruins within a fifteen minute walk. It is also the one part of Antalya that does not feel like a city of two and a half million people.

The alternative is the Konyaaltı end of the seafront, which has the long pebble beach and the museum and is on the tram. The big resort hotels are strung out east towards Lara and Belek and are a taxi ride from anything historic.

Timing and heat

From June to September the sites are hot, open and shadeless, and the middle of the day is best spent indoors or in the sea. Aim to be at the gate of Perge or Aspendos when it opens and back by lunch.

Spring and autumn are the best times to come: the sea is swimmable from May to November, the ruins are pleasant to walk, and the coach traffic thins out. Winter is mild, green and quiet, though some coastal restaurants shut.

Eating and swimming

The local dish is piyaz, a white bean salad made here with tahini rather than the usual dressing, eaten with köfte. Fish is good and priced by weight, and the honest places show you the fish before it goes on the grill.

Konyaaltı, west of the centre, is a long pebble beach under the mountains with clear water and public sections that cost very little. Lara, to the east, is sand and mostly belongs to hotels. There are also swimming platforms cut into the cliffs below the old town, which is the quickest dip from any hotel in Kaleiçi.

Antalya works best when you treat the ruins as morning business and the city as evening business. The sites want an early start and the old town is at its best after six, when the day trippers have gone back to their hotels and the lanes cool down.

Give it three nights and you leave with two Roman cities, a museum most countries would build a wing for, and a fair amount of time spent sitting above the water.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is Antalya worth visiting, or is it just a beach resort?
The resort strips east and west of the city are exactly what they look like, but the walled old town is a genuine Ottoman and Roman quarter, and Perge, Aspendos and Termessos are among the best classical sites in the country. Three nights in Kaleiçi is a real city break that happens to have a beach at the end of the tram line.
Do I need a car?
Not for the city, which is walkable and has a tram. For Perge, Aspendos and the waterfalls a car is much the easiest option; a taxi with an agreed waiting time works for one site a day, and organised minibus tours cover two or three sites in a long day if you do not mind the pace.
When is the best time to go?
April to early June and September to October. The sea is warm from May into November, and the ruins are much more pleasant to walk when it is not thirty five degrees. July and August are hot and busy, though the evenings in the old town are lovely.
Which is better, Perge or Aspendos?
Aspendos has the single most impressive building, a theatre that still has its roof and stage wall; Perge is the more complete city, where you can read the street plan and see how people lived. They are in the same direction, so a determined day trip covers both, but each is better with a morning to itself.
Where do you swim?
Konyaaltı, the long pebble beach west of the centre under the mountains, has public sections and clear water and is at the end of the heritage tram. Lara, to the east, is sandy and mostly fronted by hotels. There are also ladders and platforms on the cliffs below the old town for a quick dip.