About Antalya Turkey Tourism İnformation

About Antalya Turkey, Antalya Tourism

Antalya is the chief city on Turkey's central Mediterranean coast, and though the city itself has a population of less than 400,000, the urban area may have as high as a million. Agriculture, shipping, light indus-try and tourism have made Antalya boom during the past few decades and this mostly modern Mediterranean city is stili growing at a fast pace.

Though always a busy port (trading to Crete, Cyprus and Egypt), Antalya has grovvn explosively since the 1960s because of the tourism boom. Its new US$75 million airport, the busiest on the Turkish Mediter­ranean, funnels travellers to the whole coast and beyond.

Rough pebble beaches (several kilometres from the centre to east and west) provide for the seaside crowd and the commercial centre provides necessities. Though Antalya has a historic Roman-Ottoman core, the ancient cities on its outskirts - Perge, Aspendos, Side, Termessos, Phaselis, Olimpos - offer more to see in the way of historic buildings. Antalya is a good base from which to visit them.

Antalya History

This area has been inhabited since the earli-est times. The oldest artefacts found in the Karain caves, 25km inland from Antalya, have been dated to the Palaeolithic period. Antalya as a city, however, is not as old as many other cities which once lined this coast but it is stili prospering while the older cities are dead.

Founded by Attalus II of Pergamum in the İst century BC, the city was named At-taleia after its founder. When the Pergamene kingdom was willed to Rome, Attaleia bec-ame a Roman city. Emperor Hadrian visited here in 130 AD and a triumphal arch (Hadri-yanüs Kapısı) was built in his honour.

The Byzantines took over from the Romans, in 1207 the Seljuk Turks based in Konya took the city from the Byzantines and gave Antalya a new version of its name, and also its symbol, the Yivli Minare. After the Mongols broke Seljuk power, Antalya was held for a while by the Turkish Hamidoğullan emirs. it was later taken by the Ottomans in 1391.During WWI the Allies made plans to divide up the Ottoman Empire and at the end of the war they parcelled it out. Italy got Antalya in 1918, but by 1921 Atatürk's armies had put an end to all such foreign holdings in Anatolia.