Side
"The columns of Apollo's temple have been standing here since the second century AD. I ate a köfte sandwich in their shadow and felt the appropriate smallness."
Side confounds the logic you bring to ancient sites. In most places, ruins are separated from living town by at least a fence and an admission window. In Side, a peninsula jutting into the sea east of Antalya, they are simply there — integrated into the urban fabric the way a particularly old tree gets integrated into a square, worked around rather than removed, acknowledged without ceremony.
The town itself is touristy in the way most successful beach towns become — souvenir shops, restaurants with English menus, touts near the harbor — but the bones underneath are two thousand years old and they press through.
The Temple of Apollo
The six standing columns of the Temple of Apollo at Side’s southern tip are the image that sells the place, and they deserve the attention. Built in the second century AD, the temple occupies a promontory where the peninsula meets the sea on two sides, and in the late afternoon the light comes from the west and turns the Corinthian capitals the color of old honey. The ruins are freely accessible — no ticket, no fence — which means you can walk up to the columns and stand between them and the Mediterranean and feel the full weight of what it means to be somewhere people have been treating as special for two thousand years.
I went at sunset. There were other people there, many of them, taking photographs. It didn’t diminish anything.
The Old City
Walking the main street of Side’s old town takes about five minutes if you stop nowhere. The Roman road that the current street follows is occasionally visible in sections, the original stone worn smooth by the twenty centuries of feet that came before yours. The agora — the old market square — is now a partially excavated open space near the town center, with columns and pediments rearranged by archaeology into a kind of outdoor museum. The amphitheater, one of the largest on the southern coast, seats fifteen thousand and still hosts events in summer.
Side’s small museum, inside a converted fifth-century bathhouse near the main gate, holds a collection of sculpture and artifacts from the site that punches well above its modest size. The display is old-fashioned — no interpretive technology, just objects and labels — which I found refreshing.
The Beaches
Side has two beaches running the length of the peninsula on either side of the old town: one to the east, one to the west, both long strips of sand that widen considerably away from the old city. The eastern beach is quieter and backed by dunes that the wind builds and rearranges continuously. The western beach is more developed. Both have the characteristic clear water of this coast, and in early June the sea temperature is exactly right — cool enough to be refreshing, warm enough to stay in for an hour.
Manavgat and the Waterfall
Ten kilometers north, the Manavgat River runs through the market town of the same name before dropping over a modest waterfall that draws day-trippers and locals in roughly equal numbers. The waterfall is not dramatic but the river above it is beautiful — shallow and clear over white stones, shaded by eucalyptus. The town itself has a covered bazaar worth an hour of your time.
When to go: May through June before the resort strip reaches full capacity; September and October when the heat breaks and the sea retains summer warmth. July and August are feasible but require patience with the crowds and a willingness to visit the Temple of Apollo before 8 AM or after 6 PM to have it to yourself.