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.

Turkey’s top ancient site combines intact colonnaded streets, painstakingly restored facades and stunningly painted villa interiors to evoke Roman-era life in unparalleled richness.

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.

An ancient and evocative Roman spa city dating back to AD 80 with a fabulous inland setting, above the famed calcite travertine pools of Pamukkale.

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.

Turkey’s outstanding beach is 15 kilometres of perfect sand backed by dunes and the extensive ruins of ancient Patara – and home to populations of nesting loggerhead turtles.

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.