Antalya Airport to Aspendos transfer
Aspendos is visited for one building. Its Roman theatre, put up in the 2nd century AD, still has its stage wall, vaults and tiers of seating standing, which makes it one of the most complete Roman theatres left anywhere in the Mediterranean — and it never became a museum piece: the opera and ballet festival that carries its name has been staged in it summer after summer. Behind the theatre the acropolis hill carries the remains of the city proper, and an aqueduct crosses the fields to the north. The car park is at the gate, so nothing here involves a long walk.
The site lies inland from Belek near Serik, which keeps it close to the Belek hotels: about 20 minutes from Belek or Kadriye, a little more from Boğazkent, 10 to 15 from Serik itself. From Side, Kumköy or Çolaklı it is around half an hour west, from Manavgat about 35 minutes, from Lara and Antalya about 45. Alanya means an hour and a half each way, Kemer much the same around Antalya — from either, come only as part of a longer day. One hour covers the theatre, so a coach has to bolt other stops on; your own car lets you be first through the gate and still be back for lunch.
Because the visit is short and the car stops at the entrance, this is one of the few sites that genuinely works on the drive in from the airport: 40 km, about 40 minutes, and roughly an hour and a quarter added to the transfer with the cases left in the boot. That suits a hotel in Belek, Serik or Side. If you are heading for Kemer or Alanya it is the wrong direction, and better kept for another day.
Visiting Aspendos
Everything here follows from one fact: the stage wall still stands, so you walk in through a vaulted passage and the building closes around you rather than opening out in front of you. The tiers are the visit. They are deep, uneven and cut for feet that were shod differently, and the upper rows want a hand as well, so most people climb one wedge of seating, sit in it for a while and come back down the same way. From high up, a coin dropped on the orchestra floor can be heard, and everybody tries it. The stone gives back the previous day's heat from mid-morning, and in the bowl there is nowhere to stand out of the light.
An hour is the honest figure for the theatre, and a good part of it is spent sitting down. Behind the seating a stony track climbs the hill in about twenty minutes to the city proper, on loose footing and with nothing marked once you are up; the aqueduct stands the other way across ploughed fields, reached on farm tracks rather than a path. Add both and the visit doubles. That is why the useful decision belongs at booking: the theatre on its own is the plainest case on this coast for a driver who simply waits at the gate, because there is nothing out here to be dropped at and collected from later.
First light is worth more at Aspendos than at any site near it, because the theatre is a single room: with two parties inside it the scale stops reading, while at eight you may have the whole bowl to yourself. The tiers are still used for performances in the warm months, and a staging day can take the afternoon out of the site, so if that matters to you either way — you want to see one, or you would rather not arrive during a rig — have the programme checked before the car is booked. Afterwards the same driver can put Manavgat or the canyon road into the rest of the day.
- With only an hour, sit halfway up the middle wedge for ten minutes before photographing anything: from outside the seating the building never reads as a room.
- Nothing in the bowl is level, the steps are deep and rounded off at the edges, and coming down is where people slip rather than going up.
- Between the gate and the top row there is no shade of any kind, so the water bottle does more for you here than the hat.
- The hilltop city and the aqueduct are both unsurfaced walking with no signposting, so leave them out unless you have the hour and the shoes for them.