Tiger Holidays · Turkey

Few countries pack so much into one holiday. Turkey sits where Europe meets Asia, and almost everywhere you go something older is showing through: a Roman theatre behind a beach resort, tombs cut into a cliff above a harbour, a Byzantine church carved out of volcanic rock.

This guide is a short introduction to six places we send travellers to most often, and to what is still standing in each of them.

Mediterranean Coast · ancient Pamphylia

Antalya

Antalya was founded in the second century BC as Attaleia by Attalus II, king of Pergamon, as a harbour for his fleet. Rome, Byzantium, the Seljuks and the Ottomans all took their turn, and each left something behind.

The clearest survival is Hadrian's Gate, a three-arched marble gateway built into the city walls for the visit of the Emperor Hadrian in AD 130. Behind it lies Kaleici, the walled old quarter, where Ottoman timber houses lean over lanes that run down to the Roman harbour.

The country around Antalya is unusually rich in ruins. Within an easy drive you can stand in the stadium at Perge, sit in the Roman theatre at Aspendos, among the best preserved anywhere and still used for performances, or walk out to the Temple of Apollo at Side, whose columns stand right at the water's edge.

Highlights worth building a day around:

Turquoise Coast · ancient Lycia

Fethiye

Fethiye stands on the site of Telmessos, one of the cities of Lycia. You do not have to look for the evidence: the cliff above the town is cut with rock tombs, and the grandest of them, the Tomb of Amyntas, was carved in the fourth century BC as the facade of a temple, complete with columns and pediment.

A short way inland is Kayakoy, which the Greek community knew as Levissi. It was emptied following the population exchange of 1923 and never resettled. Several hundred roofless stone houses and two churches remain on the hillside, quiet and unlike anything else on this coast.

The coastline itself is the other reason people come: the lagoon at Oludeniz, the descent into Butterfly Valley, the cold water running through Saklikent Gorge. The Lycian Way, a waymarked long-distance path, threads the whole region together.

Highlights worth building a day around:

Aegean Coast · ancient Halicarnassus

Bodrum

Bodrum was Halicarnassus, capital of Caria and the birthplace of Herodotus, the first writer we would recognise as a historian. In the middle of the fourth century BC a tomb was raised here for the ruler Mausolus on such a scale that it was counted among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and gave every later grand tomb its name: the mausoleum.

The Mausoleum itself was brought down by earthquakes and then quarried for stone. Much of that stone went into the Castle of St Peter, begun in 1402 by the Knights Hospitaller on the promontory between the two harbours. The castle survives in good order and now houses the Museum of Underwater Archaeology, whose collection of excavated ancient shipwrecks and their cargoes is among the most important in the world.

Away from the town the peninsula is a string of separate villages. Gumusluk is built over ancient Myndos, with part of the old harbour wall still visible under the water.

Highlights worth building a day around:

Aegean Coast · ancient Caria

Marmaris

Marmaris occupies the site of Physkos, a Carian port on the trade route down this coast. Its castle was rebuilt in 1522 by Suleiman the Magnificent, who gathered his fleet in the bay before the siege of Rhodes; the building now holds a small archaeological museum and the best view over the harbour.

What makes Marmaris unusual is its setting. The town sits at the head of a deep, sheltered gulf ringed with pine-covered hills, which is why it has become one of the largest sailing centres in the eastern Mediterranean.

The peninsulas either side hold some remarkable sites. Knidos, at the far tip of the Datca peninsula, was famous in antiquity for its statue of Aphrodite. East of the resort, the rock-cut tombs of Kaunos look across the Dalyan delta.

Highlights worth building a day around:

Two continents · Byzantium, Constantinople, Istanbul

Istanbul

Istanbul has been the capital of two empires and has carried three names. Founded as Byzantium, refounded as Constantinople in AD 330 and made the seat of the Roman world in the east, it then became the Ottoman capital after 1453. Very few cities can show you that much history inside a single walk.

Hagia Sophia was completed in 537 under the Emperor Justinian, and for something close to a thousand years its dome enclosed the largest interior space on earth. A few minutes away, the Basilica Cistern holds up its roof on a forest of columns sunk underground in the sixth century, and the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, the Blue Mosque, was built facing Hagia Sophia between 1609 and 1617.

Topkapi Palace was the Ottoman court for some four centuries, and the Suleymaniye Mosque is the masterpiece of Sinan, the architect who shaped the city's skyline. Between them run the Grand Bazaar, one of the oldest covered markets in the world, and the Bosphorus, which is still the best way to understand the place.

Highlights worth building a day around:

Central Anatolia · volcanic landscape

Cappadocia

Cappadocia was made by volcanoes. Ash from Erciyes and Hasandag settled and hardened into soft tuff, and wind and water then cut it into the pillars and cones known as fairy chimneys. Because the rock is soft enough to carve and firm enough to hold, people hollowed it out rather than building on it.

At the Goreme Open-Air Museum, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, you can walk into a cluster of rock-cut churches whose Byzantine frescoes have survived on the walls. Deeper underground, the cities at Derinkuyu and Kaymakli descend through level after level, with ventilation shafts, wells, stables and heavy stone doors that could be rolled across the passages from the inside, refuges built for times when the surface was not safe.

Most visitors also go up at dawn. The valleys fill with hot-air balloons at first light, which is the moment the landscape makes the most sense: a whole region shaped by erosion and then quietly carved into by hand.

Highlights worth building a day around:

Where We Fly

We run package holidays to four of these destinations, with departures from London, Manchester and Leeds Bradford:

You can see every resort and departure airport we fly to on our Popular Destinations page.