Turkey
About Antalya
Antalya is the capital of the Turkish Riviera, a big, sunny city on cliffs above the Mediterranean, with the Taurus mountains rising straight behind its beaches.
Its old harbour quarter, Kaleiçi, keeps Ottoman wooden houses, a Seljuk minaret and Hadrian's Gate from the Roman city, and the archaeological museum holds the marble statues of nearby Perge. Two long beaches, pebbly Konyaaltı and sandy Lara, run either side of town.
It's a resort city at heart, crowded in summer and mild and sunny in winter, with more Roman ruins within an hour's drive than almost anywhere else.
Eat piyaz, the local white bean salad dressed with tahini, grilled şiş köfte, and a fresh simit from a street cart.
Get to Antalya
Round trip from Prague, any dates in November 2026.
Day trips from Antalya
- Half day
Perge & Aspendos
~45 min
Two Roman cities on one road east of Antalya: Perge's gate towers and colonnaded street, and at Aspendos one of the best-preserved theatres of the ancient world, still used for an opera and ballet festival.
- Half day
Termessos
~45 min, then a steep walkA city of the Pisidians built a thousand metres up a mountain, which Alexander the Great chose not to besiege: tombs, cisterns and a theatre on the edge of a cliff, reached through a pine-forest national park.
- Day trip
Tahtalı Dağı
~1 hA cable car from the pine forests above Kemer to the bare 2,365 m summit of the coastal range, with the whole Lycian coast spread out below.
- Day trip
Olympos & Çıralı
~1 h 30 minLycian ruins scattered through a wooded gorge that opens onto a long pebble beach where turtles nest, and above Çıralı the Chimaera, flames of natural gas that have burned out of the rock for thousands of years.
- Day trip
Köprülü Kanyon
~1 h 30 minA national park around a deep river canyon, with rafting on its cold green water, a Roman bridge still in use and the ruins of Selge in the hills above.
About Turkey
Balloon valleys and layered empires
Byzantine and Ottoman Istanbul, Aegean ruins with nobody in them, and cave towns cut into soft rock in the middle of the country.
Explore TurkeyRegions, highlights and when to go