In Search of Ancient Antalya (Attaleia): A First Approach

Antalya is one of the youngest major port cities of the Mediterranean, but its origins are among the most poorly understood. A pair of misconceptions hinders study and perhaps even documentation of Hellenistic and early Roman Attaleia. First, contrary to scholarly pessimism, there is much to learn about the early city’s history and archaeology, both in the Old Town (Kaleiçi) and in the hinterland. We consider here afresh most of the old evidence: Strabo on the foundation of the city by Attalos II Philadelphos and the migration of Trojan Cilicians into western Pamphylia, early bronze coinage featuring Poseidon (it is argued) holding a dolphin, and pre-Roman remains at Ören Tepe and the upper site of Döşeme Boğazı. We gather together the fragments of the earliest public architecture found in Kaleiçi – aspects of the city’s presentation to the sea, namely, von Lanckoro ski’s location i and the façade of the Keçili Parkı / Yanık Hastane. These are highlighted and preliminarily described in an effort to join old evidence to new, including the results of the many salvage excavations undertaken in Kaleiçi since the turn of the millennium. Second, the scholarly cliché that extols the virtues of the city’s location is not only misleading, but it also mischaracterizes the nature of Attalid and Roman imperial intervention here. Large-scale urbanism in this ecology required an injection of resources and a reconfiguration of settlement and mobility, both of which, it is argued, have left their mark.