This week’s dream: Turkish Riviera

The "Turkish Riviera" – as travel agents like to call the country's southwestern seaboard – might be a little less polished than the real thing, says Jonathan Bastable in Conde Nast Traveller. But it is "an ideal getaway destination" nonetheless – affordable, welcoming and bursting with swish beach hotels, picturesque old towns, spectacular mountains and breathtaking Roman ruins. At its heart is the ancient city of Antalya, where "mazy streets and twisted byways" tumble down the hillside to a beautiful harbour. With "terrific" food available everywhere, and several "fine" hotels fashioned from 18th century mansions, it is a great base from which to explore the coast.

The city was once a major Mediterranean port: St Paul took a ship here for Antioch after preaching in Pamphylia, and the Emperor Hadrian visited it in the course of his tour of Anatolia. Its ancient walls still stand, the layers in which they grew over the millennia visible like geological strata: Greek at the bottom, then Roman, Byzantine, Seljuk and Ottoman. Today, minarets dominate the city "like sharpened pencils in a pot", interspersed with the "spear-shaped canopies of poplar trees". Its old town is colourful and fragrant, with carpet-sellers everywhere displaying their wares, busy cafes and bakeries "chock-a-block with honeyed pastries".

Concerts of all sorts are staged in the nearby Greco-Roman theatre of Aspendos, the best preserved of its kind in the world. It is a "jaw-dropping space", its seats so steeply raked that from the stage "you feel as if you're peering out of the thin end of a funnel". The ancient theatre in the ruined city of Termessos is much smaller but "no less spectacular", thanks to its mountain-top setting. The climb up to it takes 40 minutes – yet still higher peaks tower above, around which "eagles are sometimes seen to swoop and hover".
British Airways (0844 493 0787) flies to Antalya. Alternative Turkey arranges tours. ·