Aspendos
Roman Theatre Of About AD 155 By The Architect Zenon, The Best Preserved In The Mediterranean; On The UNESCO Tentative List · Serik, Antalya
Roman theatres survive all round the Mediterranean, but almost always as a bowl of seating with the stage building gone. Aspendos is the exception, and that is the whole point of it: built around AD 155 by an architect named Zenon, it still has its stage wall standing to full height, its vaulted entrances, its seating for something like twelve thousand people and enough of its roof structure to understand how the acoustics were meant to work. The reason is unromantic. The Seljuks repaired the building in the thirteenth century and used it as a caravanserai and a palace, which meant it was maintained rather than quarried for stone like every other theatre in Anatolia. The city above it - a basilica, an agora, a nymphaeum and a stadium - is largely unvisited, and the aqueduct with its pressure towers runs across the fields to the north. Almost nobody walks up to either, which is the other reason to come.
Belkis Koyu, Aspendos Oren Yeri, Serik, Serik, Antalya, Turkiye
Open daily with longer summer hours and an earlier winter close. The theatre closes to general visitors on performance days during the summer opera and ballet festival, which is the one thing that will ruin a planned visit. Check the festival schedule if you are travelling in June, July or August.