Antalya Airport to Antalya Museum transfer
The Antalya Museum is the archaeological museum for this whole stretch of coast, a long low building on the Konyaaltı side of the city with its galleries running one into the next and an open-air section of stonework outside. What fills it came out of the ground nearby, above all from Perge on the plain east of the city: Roman sculpture and carved sarcophagi are what the museum is known for, alongside material from the prehistoric caves inland and from the Lycian and Pamphylian towns along the shore. It is also the only destination on this list that is entirely under a roof.
From the airport it is 20 km and about 25 minutes — five more than the old town, because the museum lies on the far side of the centre. The road runs in past the shopping districts, crosses the middle of the city and then follows the boulevard along the clifftop towards Konyaaltı, with the bay opening on your left for the last kilometre or two. It is urban driving from end to end, and the one thing that lengthens it is the afternoon stream heading the same way to the beach.
Visiting Antalya Museum
Two hours is the honest figure. The galleries run in sequence, so you walk one route rather than choosing rooms, and the pace is set by the big pieces — the sarcophagi and the ranks of Roman statues, which is where almost everybody slows down. People who like museums take three hours, and the open-air section outside adds twenty minutes more. Whatever the number turns out to be, it is long enough that the arrangement to make is a driver who waits, agreed at booking, rather than a pickup guessed at before you have seen the place.
The argument for this visit is the weather. It is indoors, air-conditioned and level throughout, with no steps to speak of and no sun at all — which makes it the right answer on the one wet day of your week, and the right answer at three o'clock on an August afternoon, when Perge and Termessos are simply cruel. Do not expect to be the only person who worked that out: a rainy morning fills the building. The start of the day is quieter than the middle of it, and the last two hours before closing are quieter still.
The pairing that justifies a car here is Perge: walk the colonnaded street in the morning, see in the afternoon what was carried out of it, and the site stops being a field of stones. Closer to hand, Kaleiçi and Hadrian's Gate are a few kilometres east — twenty minutes on a marble street against two hours in cool galleries, which is about as different as two stops in one city get — and Konyaaltı beach is below the cliff the museum stands on. Together that is a comfortable half day with one car and no walking between the parts.
- The usual visit is two hours, three if you read the labels; either way settle the waiting time before you get out instead of guessing at a pickup.
- It is flat and under cover from one end to the other, far easier going than any ancient site on this coast.
- Galleries are re-hung and rooms shut for work from one year to the next, so treat any list of highlights you have read as a rough guide.
- If it is raining you will not be the only one with the idea, so come early in the day rather than after lunch.