Antalya sits where the Taurus Mountains meet the Mediterranean, and the contrast hits you almost immediately — ancient harbour walls on one side, gleaming resort hotels on the other. The international airport (AYT) is just ten kilometres from the city centre, making it one of the most accessible coastal destinations in the eastern Mediterranean. Whether you're here for the ruins, the old town or simply the sea, Antalya rewards those who look beyond the beach.
What to see in Antalya
Antalya City Walls
Few city walls in Turkey carry this many layers of history. Sections date from the Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine and Seljuk periods, all stacked on top of one another around the old town. Walk the Kaleiçi perimeter and you'll read centuries of occupation without opening a single guidebook. The harbour area gives the best vantage point.
Kesik Minare (Broken Minaret)
A Roman temple, then a Byzantine church, then a Seljuk mosque — this truncated minaret has been repurposed more times than most buildings manage in a single lifetime. It's free to visit and stands as one of the most striking symbols of Antalya's layered history. Worth a stop even if you're just passing through Kaleiçi.
Tekeli Mehmet Paşa Mosque
Originally a church, this 18th-century Ottoman mosque sits right beside the Clock Tower — Antalya's most recognised landmark. Three smaller domes surround the central one, and Roman columns inside hint at the building's earlier life. It's a quiet, unhurried place that most visitors walk past without realising quite what they're looking at.
Suna & İnan Kıraç Kaleiçi Museum
Set inside a beautifully restored Ottoman house in Kaleiçi, this museum was opened by the Mediterranean Civilisations Research Centre. The exhibitions cover Antalya's history and ethnography, and the building itself — with its courtyard and traditional interiors — is as interesting as the collections. A solid hour well spent in the old town.
Antalya Harbour
Dating to the 2nd century BC, this Roman harbour is now a marina framed by cliffs and ancient walls. Gülets and wooden boats bob at their moorings while tourists and locals share the same narrow waterfront. It's also the departure point for boat trips along the coast — and a perfectly decent spot for a long, unhurried walk.
Karaalioğlu Park
A large, shady park running alongside the old town, with clifftop viewpoints that look out over the Mediterranean towards Konyaaltı Beach. The historic Hıdırlık Tower stands within its grounds. On a warm evening, half of Antalya seems to take a stroll here — and it's easy to see why.
Phaselis
Around 50–60 km from Antalya, this ancient port city was founded in the 7th century BC. Roman baths, an agora, a theatre and a colonnaded street running between three bays — it's an extraordinary site, made all the better by its coastal setting. Go on a weekday if you can; it gets busy in high season.
Side
The Temple of Apollo at sunset is the image most people associate with this coastal town, and it doesn't disappoint. But Side has considerably more besides: a theatre that once held 20,000 spectators, the Gate of Vespasian and a good stretch of beach. It's about an hour's drive east of Antalya and makes for an excellent full-day trip.
Audio guide of Antalya with Guipock
An audio guide Antalya visit makes a real difference here. Kaleiçi is dense, layered and not always well-signed — it's the sort of place where you can walk past a 2,000-year-old gateway without quite registering what it is. Guipock gives each site a voice and context, without the weight of a guidebook or the tyranny of a fixed tour group schedule.
The app uses a GPS-guided map that tracks your position as you move through the city. When you reach a point of interest, Guipock notifies you so you can open the audio guide at your own pace. No guesswork, no missed turns — just the old town unfolding as you walk it.
All audio is produced with high-quality generated audio across multiple languages and regional accents — British English, American English, Australian English, European and Latin American Spanish, French, German and more. So if you're travelling as a family with different mother tongues, everyone can listen in their own language simultaneously.
That brings us to the family code feature. One payment unlocks the full guide for your entire group — each person uses their own phone, in their own language, at their own pace. No need to buy separate copies or share a single device between four people.
There's also a children's mode, which covers the same sites but with adapted language, shorter segments and the kind of details that actually hold a child's attention. Practical if you're steering a nine-year-old past Byzantine walls on a hot afternoon.
Antalya's old town does have Wi-Fi dead spots, and mobile data can be patchy near the harbour cliffs. The offline download feature solves this neatly — download everything before you set off and the app works without a data connection for the entire visit. The Antalya app audio guide is available directly through Guipock.
