Perge
Pamphylian City With One Of The Best Preserved Ancient Stadiums In The Mediterranean; On The UNESCO Tentative List · Aksu, Antalya
Perge is the easiest of the great Pamphylian cities to walk and one of the least atmospheric, and both facts come from the same thing: it is flat. The city lies on a plain twenty minutes from Antalya, so instead of scrambling you stroll a colonnaded main street nearly three hundred metres long with a water channel running down the middle of it - a channel that still holds water after rain and that tells you immediately how the city cooled itself. At one end stand two enormous round Hellenistic gate towers; at the other, below the acropolis mound, a nymphaeum fed the channel. To the side is the stadium, which is the reason to come: around twelve thousand seats with the vaulted chambers beneath them almost entirely intact, so you can walk through the undercroft as spectators did. The sculpture that made Perge famous is all in the Antalya Museum, which should be the same day's business. There is no shade at all.
Barbaros Mahallesi, Perge Oren Yeri, Aksu, Aksu, Antalya, Turkiye
Open daily with longer summer hours and an earlier winter close. The theatre, across the road from the main site, has been closed for restoration for long periods and may not be open at all - check before counting on it. Excavation seasons close sections. Little shade at any time of day.