Antalya Airport to Selge transfer
Selge is a mountain village with a Greek city underneath it. The houses of Altınkaya stand among the walls, cisterns and column drums of a town that sat around a thousand metres up in the Taurus above the Köprülü Canyon, and the theatre — cut into the hillside at the edge of the village, its seating banked in tiers against the slope — is what people climb up here for. Behind it the ground rises to the acropolis hills, with an agora, a stoa and the remains of a temple, and the village works its fields and its stock between them.
The airport lies 97 km back and the journey takes about 85 minutes, and its two halves are nothing alike. First the coast road east past Serik; then north up the Köprüçay valley through Beşkonak to the Roman bridge over the gorge; and then the part that matters, a narrow road that climbs out of the valley in one bend after another, rock on one side and the drop on the other, through eroded pinnacles of stone to the village. It is the finest drive in this region, and it is also the reason people book a car instead of taking a rental up it.
Visiting Selge
You are set down in the village and you walk from there. The theatre is the set piece: the seating is banked against the slope, from the top rows you look out over the mountains, and the stage side stands open to the valley. Behind it a track and then sheep paths take you up towards the acropolis, past the agora, the stoa and what is left of the temple, with walls and cisterns surfacing between the fields. An hour and a half to two hours covers the theatre and a walk uphill; longer if you go out to the far ridge.
The village is around a thousand metres up, which is the second reason to come: in August it is several degrees cooler here than on the coast, and the air is different. In winter and early spring it is genuinely cold, wet cloud sits on the ridge and the road can be poor. Underfoot in the village there are stony lanes, uneven grass and loose slope, with dogs and livestock about. Mornings are best, both for the light on the theatre and because the valley hazes over in the afternoon — and the drive back down is easier in daylight.
This is a full day, not a car that waits two hours — and still one car for the day, because there is nothing to hire up here and nothing coming through. The run that makes sense is up in the morning with a stop at the Roman bridge, Selge until the middle of the day, then back down the same road to the canyon for lunch by the river and the rafting camps in the afternoon. Two of this region's best things sit on one mountain road, and folding them into a single booking is exactly what a private car is for.
- It is a thousand metres up: take a layer even in summer, and expect proper cold and cloud outside the season.
- Stony lanes, grass and loose slope underfoot, with livestock and village dogs about — closed shoes, and keep children with you.
- The bends on the way up catch travel-sick passengers, so take something before you leave the coast rather than at the bridge.
- Pair it with the Köprülü Canyon on the way back down; the bridge and the rock pinnacles are worth a stop each on the same road.