About this guide

The stretch of Turkish coast around Antalya has a marketing name — the Turkish Riviera — and an older, better one: the Turquoise Coast, after the colour of the sea against the limestone. This is an independent guide to it. Not a brochure, not a ranked list of "musts", but a set of guides written by people who went to the places, took the dolmuş or the rental car, paid the entrance fee, swam off the rocks, and then wrote down what they actually found.

How we divide the coast

The coast runs for hundreds of kilometres, and it does not reward treating it as one resort. We split it the way most visitors end up experiencing it:

• Antalya — the big city and its airport, the old town of Kaleiçi, and the city beaches that most trips begin from.
• The coast towns — Side and its Roman ruins, pine-backed Kemer, chic Kaş and Kalkan in the west, and lively Alanya in the east.
• Beaches & ruins — Olympos and the Chimaera, the famous coves of Kaputaş and Patara, and the great ancient cities of Aspendos and Perge.
• Practical — the day trips, the table, getting around, and when to come and what it costs.

The one rule

A guide only goes up if it has been checked on the ground, recently. Transfer times change with the August traffic, a site's hours move, a beach gets a new row of sunbeds, a ferry stops running. Where something is likely to have shifted by the time you read it, the guide says so and tells you to confirm before you build a long day around it.

What we link to

Where it helps, the guides point to the sources worth trusting — the airport, the site and museum authorities, the official tourism pages. We are not paid to recommend anything, and we keep the guide clear of the sponsored "experiences" and affiliate links that clutter most travel sites.

That is the whole of it. Start with wherever you are flying into, read the practical guide on getting around, and let the coast open out from there.