Antalya

The Truncated Minaret Mosque served as a Greek temple and the Church of St Peter before being badly damaged during a seventh-century Arab invasion. The Byzantines made it a church, and then the Ottomans made it a mosque during the 15th century. But the site was destroyed once again, this time by fire, in 1896, which took the minaret’s wooden crown. However, with sun-bleached pop cans and shattered examples of classic Turkish pottery competing for shade among overgrown weeds, the ruins are an improbable monument to shabby grandeur and well worth stopping for on a tour of Kaleici.

Phone:

N/a

Opening hours:

N/a

Address:

Hespaci Sokak, Kaleici

Beach Park provides the most obvious proof that Antalya has become a hot spot for summer tourists. Remarkably, Konyaalti still rates a blue flag for cleanliness. On most days the beach is a mix of ribaldry and family fun, with rival stops along the beach competing for the loudest techno and kids kicking soccer balls along the boardwalk, which has steadily pushed west since the park was founded in 2002. Most beach clubs have comfy bean bag chairs for chilling out and watching the sun set on Mount Olympos to the west.

Phone:

N/a

Opening hours:

N/a

Address:

Konyaalti Plaj, 2km west of the city centre

For good reason Aspendos hosts the closing gala of the Golden Orange Film Festival, the country’s best film festival. It also hosts the annual ballet and opera festival (mid-June to early July). Aspendos’ Roman amphitheatre, the best preserved from antiquity, built by the architect Zeno in about AD162, not only seats 15,000 but may very well be the finest Roman structure left standing in Europe.

Phone:

N/a

Opening hours:

8am-7pm (summer), 8.30am-5pm (winter) and 8am-4pm during festival season

Address:

50km east of Antalya

While rampaging across Anatolia during the fourth century, Alexander the Great set his sights on conquering Termessos. The Macedonian ultimately decided to let sleeping dogs lie, largely because the high ground on either side of the city’s mouth provided an awesome natural defence. An impressive array of ruins remains from the Pisidian era, when independent tribes who swore no allegiance to the Hittite empire – nor to the Greeks or Persians later on – found refuge there. Remarkably, Termessos has never been excavated. It’s possible to walk all over the ruins, perched high on a 1050m plateau.

Phone:

N/a

Opening hours:

7.30am-7.30pm daily

Address:

35km northwest of Antalya

An important city of ancient Pamphylia, Perge was settled by the Hittites around 1500BC. The bulk of the Antalya Archaeological Museum’s exhibits were lifted from Perge starting in the 1940s. Thyke, Greek goddess of fortune, was surely smiling down when archaeologists uncovered the body of Plancia Magna, Perge’s benefactress, who is said to have nearly achieved Goddess-status during her lifetime.

Phone:

N/a

Opening hours:

9am-7.30pm daily

Address:

18km northeast of Antalya

The crown jewel of Antalya museums has a decent collection of local finds, as you might expect from a region that has been inhabited for 150,000 years. Continue past the Paleolithic stuff where the collection becomes remarkable deeper into the museum’s bowels. Excavations from nearby Perge have yielded an impressive array of second-century statues and busts of regular folk and Roman luminaries like Emperor Hadrian, along with the truncated Hercules – Antalya has one half of the statue, New York’s MOMA, the other. Negotiations to restore the sculpture of the greatest human in Greek mythology continue.

Phone:

+90 (0)242 238 5688

Opening hours:

9am-7.30pm, except Wed

Address:

Kenan Evren Bulvari, Konyaalti, 2km west of the city centre

Really two buildings across the street from each other, the museum complex houses the Suna and Inan Kirac Research Institute on Mediterranean Studies along with ethnographic exhibits showing what life in Kaleici was like back in the day of Ibn Batutah. Ibn Batutah, the great 14th-century Moroccan traveller, set off for Mecca and wound up spending 20 years on the road. He visited Kaleici from 1335-40 and remarked on the settlement’s Greek, Jewish and Muslim composition. Britain’s Rear Admiral Francis Beaufort also spent time in the area in the 19th century. The museum houses a small collection of photographs from the 1860s onward. While the building’s simulated brick paint job won’t win any awards, it certainly provides a striking contrast to the collapsed wooden home next door.

Phone:

+90 (0)242 243 4274

Opening hours:

9am-noon & 2pm-7.30pm between Jun-Sep; 9am-noon & 1pm-6pm (except Wed, when the museum closes for the afternoon), Oct-May

Address:

Barbaros Mah, Kocatep Sok. No: 25, 07100 Kaleici

One of the most popular bars in Antalya and one of the largest in Turkey, Club Arma (until recently known as Club 29) definitely has location, built into a cliff just west of the old marina near an ancient warehouse. A classy, spare place for lunch or dinner while listening to the waves crashing below, the terrace thumps with 2000 revellers when Arma turns into an open-air disco deeper into the night.

Phone:

+90 (0)242 244 9710

Opening hours:

Restaurant 11am-midnight daily, disco 11pm-4am daily

Address:

Kaleiçi, Antalya Marina

Golf is new in Turkey, and so too golf tourism. But the 6279m, par 72 Championship course at the National Golf Club in Belek, designed by Ryder Cupper David Feherty, is one of Turkey’s best in terms of atmosphere and lineage. Backed by the Taurus Mountains, the course hosted the European Senior PGA Tour championship in 1996 and 1997. The club also maintains a nine-hole teaching course along with a water park.

Phone:

+90 (0)242 725 4623

Opening hours:

N/a

Address:

Belek Turizm Merkezi, 07500 Serik, Antalya

In the shadow of the cliffs near Antalya Beach Park, Aqualand offers a break from the salt and sea, featuring waterslides and a wave pool that is surely superior to Konyaalti Beach’s fairly mild surf. The park also has a restaurant and disco for the evening hours, and a baby-sitting service/play area for children.

Phone:

+90 (0)242 238 5600

Opening hours:

May-Oct 9.30am-6pm daily

Address:

Dumlupinar Bulvari, Konyaalti