Things to do in Pamukkale

The village under the white cliff

Pamukkale is a village at the cliff's foot. It exists for the terraces, and Denizli, the working city of the valley, is nineteen kilometres away. Karahayit sits five kilometres north, where the same thermal system surfaces full of iron and stains its basins rust-red.

Hierapolis on the plateau

Most visitors underrate the ruins on top. Eumenes II of Pergamon founded a spa city here in the second century BC, and it passed to Rome in 133 BC. Almost everything standing today went up under the Romans, on the strength of the same springs.

• The theatre. Roman, heavily restored, seating for around 15,000, and the best-preserved thing on the plateau.
• The necropolis. Over two kilometres of roadside tombs, more than 1,200 of them.
• The museum. Installed in the Roman bath house, mostly sculpture and sarcophagi lifted from the site.
• The colonnaded street. A main axis with its gates at both ends, and the part day trips skip.

What the village sells besides the walk

Balloons lift at first light over the terraces and the ruins, with pickup from the village or from Karahayit. Tandem paragliding launches from the ridge above and comes down by the terraces. Both are weather calls.

Lake Salda is the other regular outing. It lies two hours west and is sold as a full day. Otherwise the village trade is transfers and guided walks of the site, group or private.

Practical

• Sleeping here. Coaches arrive late morning and are gone by five. A night in the village buys the site twice over, nearly empty both times.
• Airport. Denizli Cardak is seventy kilometres east, and the shared transfer allows about an hour and forty with hotel stops. Denizli city is nineteen kilometres and half the time.
• Flights and wind. Balloons and paragliding are cancelled for wind, so keep a spare morning rather than a spare hour.
• Weather. Summer afternoons pass 35C on white rock with no shade at all. The ruins on the plateau offer none either.
• Cash. The village is small and cards are accepted unevenly outside the hotels.