Things to do
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Manavgat Waterfall
A wide, low fall on the Manavgat river three kilometres north of Manavgat town, more a shelf than a drop, with white water foaming across a broad front and shady tea gardens along the bank. It shows best from higher ground, it can vanish under high water in a flood, and it once appeared on the back of the five lira banknote.
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Side Museum
Sculpture, sarcophagi, busts and inscriptions from the excavations, shown in a restored Roman bath house opposite the theatre. The entrance is on the east side, through a paved courtyard that was the bath's second tepidarium, into a garden that was once the palaestra. The piece to find is the frieze of Poseidon myths on the courtyard's north wall, and a visit takes about an hour.
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Temple of Apollo
Five marble columns and their capitals at the tip of the peninsula, from a temple to Apollo built around 150 AD under Antoninus Pius and restored between 1984 and 1990, standing directly over the water. It is unfenced and at its best in the last hour of light, beside the excavations of the neighbouring Temple of Athena.
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Side Ancient Theatre
A Roman theatre seating around fifteen thousand, raised on vaults because Side had no hill to cut it into, and later walled off as an open-air church. It is the largest in Pamphylia and faces the Side Museum across the street, so the two make a single visit, and the ruins around it are free to walk through.
