Antalya is a city best read from its harbour. The old quarter, Kaleiçi, descends in tight lanes of timber-framed Ottoman houses to a small horseshoe bay that served as a Roman port and now shelters wooden boats beneath the cliffs. At the top of the slope stands Hadrian's Gate, a triple-arched marble entrance raised in honour of the emperor's visit and still the most elegant piece of Roman architecture in the city. A short walk away, the fluted brick minaret of the Yivli Minare rises as the emblem of the Seljuk period, while mosque courtyards, hamams and converted churches record the successive communities that held the town. Beyond the walls, the modern city spreads along a coastal plain between the Mediterranean and the wall of the Taurus Mountains, with waterfalls dropping directly to the shore and one of Turkey's richest archaeological museums holding the finds of the surrounding Pamphylian sites. The film moves between monument and street life, treating Antalya as a working Mediterranean city rather than a resort backdrop.
