At the edge of Kaleiçi’s cliffs, Hıdırlık Tower presents a square base supporting a round upper drum. Its purpose remains debated: the structure may have begun as a Roman mausoleum before later becoming part of the city’s defenses.
Guide preview
The tower’s shape changes as your eye moves upward: a square base carries a circular upper structure. Hıdırlık stands near the edge of Kaleiçi above the Mediterranean, where its position later made it useful within the city’s defensive wall system.
Continue exploring
Discover the full story
Keep reading with a travel pass and explore every full guide and tour.
UpgradeQuick facts
- The tower has a square lower section and circular upper drum.
- It was later incorporated into Antalya’s defensive wall system.
- Its original use as a mausoleum is considered probable, not certain.
More places in Antalya
Antalya Aquarium
Antalya Aquarium’s long underwater tunnel turns a visitor’s walk into a changing view of marine life overhead and beside you. The venue’s themed tanks build a sequence of habitats, while the tunnel provides a simple, memorable sense of immersion.
Antalya Clock Tower
The clock faces are set into a tower built on an older fortification at Kale Kapısı. Antalya’s Clock Tower shows how a historic gate bastion became a civic landmark, and how twentieth-century residents reshaped the old town’s entrance.
Antalya Ethnography Museum
Antalya Ethnography Museum occupies two Ottoman-era mansions in Kaleiçi. Their rooms present objects and settings from local domestic life, while the gardens preserve inscriptions and other architectural fragments from earlier periods.
Antalya Museum
Antalya Museum brings together finds from Lycia, Pamphylia, and Pisidia, the ancient regions that surround the modern city. Its galleries connect local archaeological discoveries with a broader story of settlement, worship, trade, and artistic change.
Antalya Old Harbour
Antalya Old Harbour occupies a naturally sheltered inlet below Kaleiçi’s historic walls. Stairs and gates once linked the waterfront with the walled town, making the port both a point of arrival and part of the city’s defensive and commercial life.
Antalya Science Centre
Antalya Science Centre occupies a former textile-factory site at Dokumapark, connecting hands-on science learning with Antalya’s industrial history. Its galleries and workshops invite visitors to test ideas through practical experiments rather than encounter science only as finished information.