Best ancient sites on the Turquoise Coast

This ancient Lycian mountain city dates back to the 5th or 6th century BC. Set on a series of terraces with exquisite views over the valley, it has an especially lovely theatre and some of the most extensive bath buildings in Anatolia.

With its cobbled streets, spectacular surviving villa interiors and painstakingly restored facades, Turkey’s best-known ancient site stunningly evokes Roman-era life in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. It’s rare to experience a city quite so rich in architectural detailing, not least inscriptions, statuary and restored facades.

Wandering Ephesus’ main street, past a wealth of buildings including bathhouses, temples and the exceptional Library of Celsus, is an unmissable experience for anybody with the least fascination for the past.

Heraclea’s impressive Hellenistic-era defensive walls enclose not only ruined temples, theatre and agora but also the simple settlements of Kapikiri, a fishing community on the shores of Lake Bafa. The mountains behind the lake are scattered with ruined monasteries and ancient cave paintings.

This unique ancient site is home to the evocative Roman-era ruins of Hierapolis, an arresting UNESCO World Heritage Site dating back to AD 80.

At its height, thousands travelled from across the Roman Empire to bathe in the medicinal hot springs and the town grew to a population of 100,000. The town was eventually destroyed, first by marauding Persian armies, then later by a devastating earthquake.

Today, it is notable for its fine theatre, impressive necropolis, museum and martyrium of the apostle St. Philip.

Occupying a spectacular position at the tip of the Datca Peninsula, with its harbours still used by visiting gulets, Knidos is in the midst of an extensive archaeological restoration. Works continue along the ancient stoa, the theatre and the numerous temples.

The riverside setting is the key here as much of this ancient city, barring a few stand-out sarcophagi, is choked in vines and laurels. Enjoy the nature, the birdlife and turtles, and the beach, which leads beyond a headland to the adjacent one at Cirali.

The pristine sand beach at Patara, at the mouth of the Xanthos (Esen) River delta, runs for some 15 kilometres from Karadere in the west to the superb ancient port ruins at Patara.

The main approach is through the low-key village of Gelemiş, where Ibrahim’s Durak Restaurant offers a superb lunch spot, to the ancient site.

Prioritise visits to the theatre and the adjacent parliament building; the energetic may continue as far as the lighthouse, currently under restoration, before cutting through the dunes to the beach.

The alternative is to return to the road and follow it for a hundred metres beyond the ancient site to where duckboards lead to the beach.

Be mindful of the restrictions: Patara is an important nesting site for endangered loggerhead turtles, and closes after sunset between May and October to allow the turtles to come onto the beach and lay their eggs free of any disturbance. For this reason, sightings of turtles are uncommon, as they rarely venture onto the beach by day.

The most beautiful of all ancient Lycian cities, Pinara is a tumble-down joy set deep in the hills above the Xanthos Valley. The theatre is especially beautiful, as are the so-called Royal Tombs set in a glade of ancient plane trees.

This lovely ancient site, occupying steep pine-clad slopes above the Meander Delta, is a rare example of an intact ancient Greek settlement. With an especially beautiful odeon (auditorium) and temple, Priene offers a winning evocation of Hellenistic city life at the time of Alexander the Great.

Little Sidyma is a place of enormous charm; a picturesque and little visited ancient town whose sarcophagi and beautifully coffered tombs are now scattered amidst the gardens and fields of the present hamlet of Dodurga.

An inland site, home even now to a scattering of villagers, Stratonikeia is a magnificent and little-visited city with outstanding remains, not least the monumental North Gate and the gymnasium.

The monumental Temple of Apollo is largely intact within its hem of tottering or fallen fluted columns. Home to one of the great oracles of the ancient world, the temple stood for hundreds of years without ever being completed, as the mason’s marks on uncarved stonework reveal.

A UNESCO-listed World Heritage Site, Lycia’s ancient hilltop capital is famous for its ‘pillar tombs’ – whose exquisite friezes were removed to the British Museum in the 19th century – and the grand colonnaded way leading to the sarcophagus-scattered necropolis.