Antalya Airport to Arykanda transfer
Arykanda is a Lycian city built in terraces up a steep mountainside, high above a valley in the hills inland from Finike, and it is often called the most dramatically sited ruin in Lycia. Nothing here stands on the flat. Baths, agora, tombs, theatre and stadium sit on shelves cut one above another into the slope, with the valley falling away in front of them and bare grey peaks behind. Pine grows between the levels. Seeing the city means climbing it, terrace by terrace, and that single fact shapes everything about a visit.
It is 160 km from Antalya Airport, around 130 minutes, and Arykanda is the one site on this coast that leaves the sea behind for good. At Finike the route turns north onto the Elmalı road and starts up the Arif valley, gaining height through a long sequence of bends with the water dropping further away behind each one. The air cools, the pines begin, and the country turns mountain rather than coast. The site is signed off that road above the village of Arif, and the car park stands well above the valley floor.
Visiting Arykanda
Reckon on an hour and a half to two hours on your feet, and almost all of it uphill. Driving alone comes to over two hours at either end of the day, so it is a full one even though the site is not large; an early start leaves room for everything, an afternoon start does not. A car waiting at the car park is the straightforward answer, since you come back to exactly the point you left from. On the way back down, Limyra or Finike folds into the same run without adding another mountain road.
The climb begins at the first step and never really lets up. The bath complex and the agora occupy the lowest levels and give the easiest walking; above them each terrace is reached by steps or a worn path, and the higher you get the less there is between you and the drop. Theatre and stadium are near the top, and the reward for that last stretch is the theatre itself, whose seats look straight out over the valley with nothing built in the way. Most people turn round there, and going down afterwards takes far less time than coming up.
Underfoot it is loose stone and steps worn round at the edges, so footwear counts for more here than at any level site. There is pine shade in patches, which most Lycian ruins cannot offer, but the open terraces have none at all and the middle of a summer day on them is hard work. Morning is cooler and the light falls into the valley rather than straight down it, which is the better of the two. The other thing to expect is quiet: Arykanda is little visited, and having a whole hillside city to yourself is ordinary here.
- Take the levels in order from the baths upward; zigzagging back down the slope to catch something missed is the tiring way to do it.
- The theatre near the top is what the climb is for, so keep something in reserve for the last terraces.
- Worn steps and loose stone make this a site for proper shoes rather than sandals.
- Shade is patchy on the open levels, which makes an early pickup worth it in high summer.