Antalya Airport to Sillyon transfer
Sillyon is a flat-topped hill standing alone on the plain between Perge and Aspendos, with a Pamphylian city spread across the top of it and down the ramp on its western flank. It held out against Alexander in 333 BC, which is most of what it is famous for, and what survives is a Hellenistic gate and tower complex, the stone ramp that climbs to it, a building carrying a long inscription in the local Pamphylian dialect and, higher up, a mosque and a bath from the Seljuk centuries. A landslip in the last century carried part of the upper city over the edge.
From the airport it is 25 km and about 30 minutes, and only the first two thirds of that is proper road: east towards Serik, then a turning inland and a few kilometres of single-track lanes between cotton fields, greenhouses and irrigation ditches to the village at the foot of the hill. That is where the driving stops. The hill rises straight out of flat farmland, so for the last ten minutes you can see where you are going — and you can also see that the end of the journey is not something a car does.
Visiting Sillyon
The climb is the visit. A rough track goes up the western flank, twenty to thirty minutes of loose stone and dry thistle with no patch of shade on it, and at the top you come out at the gate and the ramp, the best-preserved things here. Then the plateau opens: a wide, windy, half-empty tableland with walls, cisterns, the Seljuk buildings and the broken edge where the landslip took the rest. You walk it rather than tour it, there are almost no signs, and two hours from car to car including the climb is realistic.
Choose the morning, and in July and August choose early morning or nothing: the track faces the sun, there is not one tree on the top, and stone and thistle give you no relief at either end of the walk. After rain the same track turns to slick clay. What you get in exchange is solitude — you are fifteen minutes from one of the most visited sites on this coast and may well be the only people on the hill, sharing it with goats and a view that runs from the mountains to the sea.
Commercially this is simple: two hours with a driver waiting at the bottom, because there is no reason here to send the car away and none to call it back. It is not a first ancient city either — a family with small children and one afternoon belongs at Aspendos, half an hour east, where the car park is at the gate. Sillyon is for people who already like ruins and want one to themselves, and the day that works is Perge in the morning, Sillyon before lunch and Aspendos after, all three inside forty-five minutes of each other.
- Boots or trainers, not sandals: the track up is loose stone and the top is thistle and rubble.
- There is no shade on the hill at all, and the climb is what people underestimate — carry more water than you think you need.
- The plateau ends in cliffs on most sides and nothing up there is fenced, so keep children close and watch the edges.
- Two hours is the honest figure including the walk up and down; if you only have one, spend it at Perge or Aspendos.