Antalya Airport to Patara Ancient City transfer
Patara is a very large Lycian city that has only partly been dug out, spread behind the dunes on the flat of the Eşen delta and entered through the small village of Gelemiş. A colonnaded main street runs the length of it, over long stretches still half-buried. At one end stands the restored bouleuterion, the assembly building in which the Lycian League met; further on a theatre is being freed from the dune that covered it, and a lighthouse stands out toward the shore. One entrance covers the whole of it, and the road carries on behind the ruins as far as the sand.
From Antalya Airport it is 241 km and about 190 minutes, a little over three hours in each direction. The road holds a steady pace as far as Kaş, then changes character: the corniche on to Kalkan is carved along the cliff face, one bend after another, and the average speed falls away sharply for the better part of an hour. Past Kalkan the descent opens on to the flat of the Eşen delta, and the last of it is a narrow road leaving the highway through Gelemiş toward the dunes. Kaş or Kalkan is the sensible place to stop for a breather.
Visiting Patara Ancient City
Just over three hours out and as long again back makes this a whole day of a holiday rather than an afternoon, and it is worth booking it as one. Of the Lycian sites within reach, Patara is the one where it makes most sense to be dropped off and collected later rather than keep the car with you: most people give the ruins two to three hours, and then the beach at the end of the road takes as long as it takes. Nobody sensibly asks a car to stand there through all of that. Agree a pickup time when you book, or agree that the driver waits — either works, so long as it is settled before you set off.
Sand makes the character of this place. It drifts over the paving, it lies loose and tiring underfoot, and the excavation itself comes down in essence to shifting it. Distances inside are longer than photographs suggest: the main street is a walk in itself, and the lighthouse stands further out again toward the shore. Shade is close to nonexistent, so the middle of the day in July and August is punishing, and the hours worth having are the first after sunrise or the last of the afternoon. That, more than anything else, should set the time you leave.
You pass a monumental gateway on the way in, but the right place to begin is the bouleuterion: it is the one building here that stands substantially whole and feels roofed, and it gives you the scale of everything else at the outset. From there most people walk the main street end to end, see the theatre, then carry on toward the dunes and the sand behind them — a protected turtle nesting ground, with restrictions in force through the nesting season. Closed shoes for the cut stone, something to change into for the beach, and carry water, since nothing is sold out among the ruins.
- Come early or come late — in high summer, between roughly eleven and four, there is nowhere on the site to get out of the sun.
- Closed shoes for the ruins and something light for the sand: the ground alternates between cut stone and dune the whole way round.
- Carry your own water; once you are a little way out along the main street, everything else is a long walk away.
- The beach out at the end of it is a turtle nesting ground and parts of it are subject to seasonal restrictions, so follow whatever is marked on the ground on the day.