Pamukkale

Geothermal & TravertinesDenizli,Türkiye

A white hillside of terraced pools in southwestern Türkiye, still being built by hot springs, with a Greco-Roman spa city on the ridge above.

September·Peaking now

Sep–Oct

Autumn is the second sweet spot: September still warm, October easing into the mid-20s, the summer crowds thinning and the light turning gold and clear on the terraces. The long evening light holds right through October.

Year-round The white travertine terraces and Hierapolis stand year-round and the site never closes; only the length of the visiting day changes with the season, and the thermal water stays warm in all of them.

Pamukkale is a white hillside of terraced pools in southwestern Türkiye, in Denizli province, still being built by hot springs that lay down fresh limestone as they cool, with the Greco-Roman spa city of Hierapolis on the ridge above it, and it is walked barefoot, with warm mineral water running over the feet down the snow-white steps. The name means cotton castle, and the terraces are travertine, calcium carbonate dropped by water that comes out of the ground at 35 degrees and spreads over the slope in a sheet, so that the hill has grown for thousands of years and its face is 160 metres high and two and a half kilometres long; shoes come off at the gate to protect the surface, and the walk goes down the wet white channel from the top with the pools of blue water in their scalloped basins on either side. The kings of Pergamon founded Hierapolis on the ridge beside the healing waters in the second century BC, and the Romans made it a spa city whose theatre, baths and colonnaded street still stand, with the tomb of the apostle Philip on the hill. The Antique Pool, the one everyone calls Cleopatra's, stays warm all year and is strewn with marble columns and Corinthian capitals that slid underwater when a seventh-century earthquake brought down the Temple of Apollo above it, so that swimmers float over toppled marble rather than around it. Beside the temple a cave breathes out carbon dioxide dense enough to kill, the ancient Ploutonion, a gate to the underworld where priests led animals in to die before the crowd and came out alive by holding their breath. One of the largest ancient cemeteries in Anatolia spreads around the edges of the city, with over a thousand tombs, and balloons rise at dawn to show that the white face is the cut edge of a whole plateau of travertine. Pamukkale is a hill that water is still building, and a city was built to bathe in it.

Worth knowing

Good to know

You walk the terraces barefoot, since shoes are banned to protect the stone — bring socks, because the wet travertine is slippery and its ridges can be sharp underfoot.
Arrive at opening or in the last two hours before closing to have the pools almost to yourself; summer middays bring the tour buses.
Head to the top gate first, where the reliably full pools sit — only some terraces hold water, on a rotation that shifts through the year.
Enter through the upper Hierapolis gate and walk down — you pass the ancient city and theatre first, then descend the terraces and can finish at the Antique Pool.

Things to do

1
Walk the travertines barefoot
Shoes come off to protect the terraces, so you step down the snow-white travertine with warm mineral water running over your feet. White stone, turquoise pools and sky merge into a single glare, and the crust is rougher underfoot than it looks. Come back late in the afternoon and the same slope turns pink while the water in the pools goes gold.
2
Walk Hierapolis from the theatre to Pluto's gate
On the ridge above the travertines lies the spa city the kings of Pergamon founded beside the healing waters. A theatre is cut into the slope, its carved stage building still standing, and a colonnaded main street runs through the middle. Above them the Temple of Apollo stands over the gas-venting cleft the Romans called the gate of Pluto.
3
Swim in the Antique Pool
The Antique Pool — the one everyone calls Cleopatra's — stays warm all year, and you swim over the toppled marble rather than around it. The bottom is uneven and the stone is slick, so crossing it takes longer than it looks.
4
Walk the tombs of the necropolis
One of Anatolia's largest ancient cemeteries spreads around the edges of the old city. Many of the people buried here had come to Hierapolis hoping the hot springs would cure them, and their burial mounds and stone tombs have stood above the plain ever since.
5
Read the plateau from a balloon
From the basket the white face turns out to be the cut edge of something much larger. The travertine slab runs about six kilometres, and most of it is grey and dry, with Hierapolis and farmland sitting on top.

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Nearby

65 km