5 Days in Antalya

Start where the Romans entered the city. Hadrian's Gate, three marble arches between two towers, was built for the emperor Hadrian's visit in AD 130, and walking through it is still the grand way into Kaleiçi. Locals call it Üçkapılar, "Three Gates". It was hidden inside later walls for centuries, freed when they came down in the 1950s and restored in 1959, and you'll notice that the top of the northern tower is a later Seljuk addition. Under the middle arch, a glass panel shows the original Roman road, rutted by cart wheels. The bronze letters of Hadrian's dedication are long gone, scattered in museums across Europe.

Walk west along the old wall to Kalekapısı, the square at the top of the old town with its clock tower, and the city's symbol: the Yivli Minare, the "fluted minaret", 38 m of red brick in eight half-round ribs, decorated with turquoise tiles. It was built under the Seljuk sultan Alaeddin Keykubad I, who ruled from 1220 to 1237, when Antalya had just become the Seljuks' window on the Mediterranean.

The mosque next to it was rebuilt in 1373, and under its glass floor you can see the water channels of the older building. The complex around it includes a Seljuk madrasa, two tombs and a Mevlevi lodge, the home of the whirling dervishes, now a small free museum with their instruments and robes.

From Kalekapısı, wander down into Kaleiçi, "inside the castle". Its narrow lanes are lined with Ottoman houses with wooden bay windows overhanging the street, many of them now small hotels and cafés with bougainvillea in the courtyards. Look for the Kesik Minare, the "broken minaret", a building that sums up the city: a Roman temple of the 2nd century, then a Byzantine church of the Virgin, then a Seljuk mosque, then briefly a church again in 1361, when the King of Cyprus took the city, then a mosque again, until a fire in 1896 left it a ruin. It was restored and reopened in 2021 as a working mosque, so dress for it.

Then visit the Kaleiçi Museum, run by Koç University: an Ottoman mansion furnished as it was a century ago, and next to it the old Greek church of St. George, with a fine collection of Çanakkale and Kütahya ceramics.

Lunch is Antalya's own dish, a few minutes from Kalekapısı. Everywhere else in Turkey, piyaz is a bean salad with onion and vinegar. In Antalya it's warm white beans in a sauce of tahini, lemon and vinegar, topped with chopped egg, parsley and chili flakes, and it comes with grilled şiş köfte, long skewered meatballs. Antalya piyaz has been a protected regional dish since 2018.

Piyazcı Sami has been making it since 1933, now in its third generation, and the menu is just piyaz, köfte, salad and a dessert. It's the definitive version.

Walk down through Kaleiçi to its southern corner, where the land walls met the sea walls on the edge of the cliff. Here stands the Hıdırlık Tower, a round Roman tower on a square base from the 2nd century AD, probably a lighthouse or a watchtower, possibly a tomb, repaired by Seljuks and Ottomans. Next to it, Karaalioğlu Park runs along the clifftop, shaded by palms and pines, with benches facing the bay and the mountains. Below the cliffs, Antalyans swim off the rocks and from Mermerli, a tiny paid beach under the old walls.

Stay in the park for the sunset, the best show in town: the sun drops behind the Taurus Mountains across the bay, and the peaks go from blue to pink to black. Then walk down to the old harbor, Roman in origin (a free panoramic lift links it with Cumhuriyet Square above, the best viewpoint over the harbor), now full of wooden gulets and fishing boats under the cliffs and walls. In the evening the harbor's cafés and the bars on the walls above fill up, and Kaleiçi lights up.

For the first night, sit down at a meyhane, a tavern where dinner is a long string of small plates with rakı. Start with the Antalya meze: hibeş, a spicy, garlicky tahini dip, şakşuka, fried eggplant and peppers in tomato sauce, served cold, and wild greens in olive oil, then move on to grilled fish. Ayar Meyhanesi, in a stone house in Kaleiçi, is a good choice, and Ayyaş has live music most nights.

Perge was one of the great cities of Pamphylia, the plain between the mountains and the sea, and it's one of the biggest and best-laid-out ancient sites in Turkey. You enter past a stadium that held about 12,000 people, then through the round red towers of the Hellenistic gate, from the 3rd century BC. The gate was restored in AD 119-122 by Plancia Magna, a rich priestess and one of the most powerful women in the Roman East, who filled it with statues of the city's founders and her own family.

Beyond it runs the colonnaded main street, with a water channel down the middle that fed fountains and baths. Saint Paul passed through Perge on his first missionary journey, around AD 46, and preached here on the way back. It was also here that his companion John Mark left him and went home. The St. Paul Trail, a long-distance hiking path, starts on this street.

Drive 30 km east to Aspendos, home of the best-preserved Roman theater in the world. It was built in the middle of the 2nd century AD, under the emperors Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, by an architect named Zenon, whose name is carved in it. It seated about 7,000 people, and festival crowds have squeezed in many more. It survived almost whole because the Seljuks used it as a caravanserai and palace in the 13th century. Climb to the top row and look down: the stage building stands to its full height, and the acoustics are so good that you can hear a whisper from the stage.

Locals tell a story that the king of Aspendos promised his daughter to whoever built the best work for the city, and Zenon won her with the theater's acoustics. It's a legend, but a good one. Walk up behind the theater to see the arches of the aqueduct crossing the plain,

Below the theater, the village of Belkıs has a few simple restaurants and gözleme stalls where women roll out thin dough and cook it on a griddle with cheese, spinach or potato. Have lunch here, with an ayran and a salad, before you head back west. On the way, the Eurymedon bridge over the Köprüçay is worth a stop: a Roman bridge rebuilt by the Seljuks, with a kink in the middle.

Back towards the city, ten minutes north of Perge, a nature park in a pine and laurel forest hides Kurşunlu Waterfall, an 18 m fall into a turquoise pool, with a chain of smaller pools and cascades below it. A path loops through the gorge, cool even in summer, with ducks, turtles and the sound of water everywhere. It's a pleasant hour, not a wonder of the world, and a nice break from the stones.

Back in the city, have dinner at Hasan Antalya, a restaurant open since 1946 in the courtyard of an old han (inn) near Kalekapısı. Order tandır, lamb slow-roasted for hours in a pit oven until it falls off the bone, served on flatbread, or the local şiş and piyaz if you didn't have enough at lunch. Check prices on the menu before you order.

Termessos sits on a mountain saddle more than 1,000 m up, hidden in pine forest. In 333 BC, Alexander the Great forced his way through the pass below it, then looked at its walls and decided not to lay siege, and tradition says he called it an eagle's nest. The city stayed independent and proud, until an earthquake broke its aqueduct and the city slowly emptied in the 5th century. It has never been rebuilt or fully dug up, and the first official excavations only started in 2025, so it feels more like a discovery than a museum.

Climb past the ruins of gymnasiums, temples and cisterns, and through fields of tumbled sarcophagi, to the theater at the top. It's carved into the edge of the mountain, and from its seats you look straight down a sheer drop into the valley, with the mountains on one side and, on a clear day, the sea far below.

On the way back, stop in Konyaaltı for lunch at Şişçi İbo, a family business from Korkuteli, up in the mountains, that has been grilling köfte since 1974. Order the şiş köfte with piyaz, and Arap kadayıfı, a sweet pastry of crisp layers and syrup, for dessert.

Konyaaltı is the city's beach, about 7 km of pebbles and very clear water running west from the cliffs, with the Taurus Mountains rising straight up at the far end. A long seafront park with cycle paths, cafés and beach clubs runs behind it, and the water is warm enough to swim from May to early November. Rent a sunbed at one of the beach clubs or lay a towel down on the public stretches, and spend the afternoon doing nothing.

Before sunset, try the ice cream Antalya is proud of: yanık dondurma, "burnt ice cream", from Korkuteli in the mountains. It's made from goat's milk, sugar and salep (orchid root flour), cooked slowly in copper cauldrons over a wood fire until it scorches slightly, which gives it a smoky, caramel taste. Giliğ, a family that started making it in Korkuteli in the 1950s, has a shop near the beach, and Zamora, since 1940, and Dilara Yaşar, since 1954, are the other famous names in town.

Stay on the beach for the sunset, when the sun goes down behind the mountains at the end of the bay and the whole coast turns orange and then purple. Then walk east along the seafront promenade towards the city, where the cliffs begin, and look back at the lights of the beach.

For a treat, have dinner at 7 Mehmet, on a hill in Atatürk Culture Park above the sea, run by the same family since 1937. It's Antalya's classic restaurant, with three toques from Gault&Millau Türkiye, a terrace with a view over the bay and a menu of Aegean and Mediterranean dishes, local lamb, fish and meze.

Phaselis was founded by settlers from Rhodes around 690 BC on a small peninsula with three harbors. Its ruins lie under pine trees right by the sea: a main street paved in marble running between two harbors, a theater, baths, an aqueduct and a gate built for Hadrian's visit. Then do what everyone does and swim in one of the ancient harbors, with columns on the shore and pines down to the water.

From the coast at Tekirova, 15 minutes from Phaselis, a private road climbs 7 km to the lower station of the Olympos Teleferik at 726 m. From there, a cable car more than 4 km long lifts you 1,639 m in about ten minutes to the bare summit of Tahtalı, 2,365 m up, the highest peak on this coast. At the top you stand above the clouds, with the whole curve of the coast below you, the sea on one side and the Taurus range on the other. It's cold up there even in summer, so bring a layer.

Drive about an hour south to Çıralı, a quiet village of guesthouses and orange groves behind a long pebble beach, where loggerhead turtles lay their eggs in summer. Walk to the south end of the beach, where the paid site begins: Olympos, a city of the Lycian League, lies in a wooded gorge running down to the sea: tombs, a Byzantine church, a bath and a temple gateway half swallowed by fig trees and oleanders, with a stream running through it. It's one of the most romantic ruins in Turkey. The other entrance, from the village of Olympos up the valley, is a 20 km drive away, so use the beach.

Above Çıralı, a path climbs about 1 km through the pines to Yanartaş, the "burning rock": dozens of small flames that come out of cracks in the mountainside and have been burning for at least 2,500 years. The gas is methane from deep in the rock, and it never goes out. Ancient writers already described this eternal fire, and the Greeks said it was the breath of the Chimaera, a fire-breathing monster killed here by the hero Bellerophon. Just below the flames are the real ruins of a sanctuary of Hephaestus, the god of fire, and a Byzantine church.

Go at dusk and stay until dark, when the flames glow in the black hillside. A second, quieter group of flames burns about 1 km further up the path. Bring a torch for the walk down.

Have dinner at one of Çıralı's family guesthouses or beach restaurants, where the food is home cooking: grilled fish, meze, salads from the garden and gözleme, thin folded flatbread with cheese or greens. Then sleep in the village and drive back to Antalya in the morning, about 1 hour 30 minutes.

The Düden river runs underground through the limestone for much of its course and comes out north of the city, where it falls into a pool in a shady park of plane trees. A path takes you down behind the curtain of water into a damp cave, and around the pools families picnic and kids feed the ducks. It's at its fullest in winter and spring, and much weaker by the end of the summer.

Downstream, the same river reaches the coast east of the city and drops about 40 m off the cliff straight into the sea, one of the few waterfalls in the world to do so. You can see it for free from Düden Park on Lara Caddesi, right on the clifftop above the drop, especially lovely at sunset. Or see it from the water: boat trips leave the old harbor every hour or so and cruise along the cliffs to the falls, close enough to feel the spray, usually with a stop for a swim. The boats are gulets with loud music and cheap tea, and it's good fun.

For lunch, take a short taxi ride to Arzum Döner, open since 1984, for yaprak döner, thin sheets of beef stacked and roasted on a vertical spit, sliced into bread or served as İskender, on bread with tomato sauce, yogurt and hot butter. It's the place locals queue for.

Back in Kaleiçi, spend the hottest part of the day in Sefa Hamamı, a small bathhouse built by the Seljuks in the 13th century on Roman foundations and restored in 1450. You warm up on the heated marble stone under the dome, then an attendant scrubs you with a rough kese mitt and washes you in a cloud of soap foam. It's simple, old and much less touristy than the big hotel spas.

Spend the late afternoon in the old bazaar streets around Kalekapısı and the clock tower of 1901, where shops sell spices, dried fruit, Turkish delight and towels. Antalya is a citrus city, and the thing to take home is jam: turunç (bitter orange) and bergamot jam, made from the fruit of the trees that line the streets. Also look for bağaça, a dry cookie-bread made with tahini, cinnamon and mastic, at Meşhur 18'in, making them since 1940, and try kabak tatlısı, pumpkin cooked in syrup and topped with tahini and walnuts, a protected Antalya dessert.

For the last night, stay in Kaleiçi. Seraser, open since 1989 in an Ottoman house, serves Mediterranean and Turkish dishes in a courtyard, and has a toque from Gault&Millau Türkiye. If you'd rather end with music, go back to the meyhanes, raise a glass of rakı and say şerefe.