One of Turkey's most rewarding and least visited Roman sites, Aphrodisias sits about 100 km inland from the Aegean coast, which keeps the crowds away and lends it a rare atmosphere of quiet. The city was sacred to Aphrodite long before the Romans arrived — there was a cult site here in Neolithic times — but the grand monuments on view today are almost entirely Roman: a well-preserved theatre, a double agora, the Baths of Hadrian, a bishop's palace, a stadium that held 30,000 spectators, and a small odeon. The on-site museum houses an outstanding collection of marble sculptures, among the finest from any single Roman city in Turkey.
Without your own transport, get here by taking a bus or dolmuş to Nazilli and then another dolmuş to Geyre, the village 600 metres from the site entrance on the main road.