Perge Örenyeri

About Perge Örenyeri

Perge lies in Aksu district, 17 kilometres east of Antalya city centre, and is one of the largest ancient cities in Turkey to survive as a whole. Pottery found on its acropolis takes its history back to the Early Bronze Age, and Hittite texts call it Parha. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism notes that Perge was one of the great sculpture centres of the ancient world; the statues found here fill the Roman galleries of the Antalya Museum. The city has been on UNESCO's World Heritage Tentative List since 2009. Wikipedia notes it was the birthplace of Apollonius of Perga, the mathematician known for his work on conic sections. Perge had three great periods. It was laid out as a planned city in the 3rd century BC, and its Hellenistic towers still stand at the old city gate. Its golden age came under Roman rule in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD, during the Pax Romana, when the theatre, stadium, city gate, agora and macellum, palaestra, baths, water channels and monumental fountains were built. The stadium is one of the best-preserved in the ancient world and the second largest of its kind in Anatolia. A long water channel with cascading pools ran down the middle of the main colonnaded street, an unusual feature for a Roman city. In the Byzantine period St Paul passed through Perge, which became the starting point of the St Paul's Way to Pisidian Antioch, and large basilicas were built here in the 5th and 6th centuries. Excavations began with Arif Müfid Mansel in 1946 and were continued by Jale İnan and Haluk Abbasoğlu; since 2012 the Antalya Museum Directorate has led the work, uncovering the western colonnaded street, its parallel water channel and the Caracalla fountain, and opening the route to the western necropolis. The site is open every day. The ancient theatre is temporarily closed while restoration is completed, according to the Ministry's visitor notice. Hours change by season (the Ministry page listed 08:00 to 17:00, ticket office until 16:30, when checked in November 2026), and MüzeKart is valid for Turkish citizens.