Side, Turkey

Side is a town of roughly 15,000 residents on a small Mediterranean peninsula about 75 km east of Antalya, founded by Greek colonists in the 7th century BC and named after the local word for pomegranate. Its Roman theatre, built in the 2nd century AD to seat 15,000 spectators, is the largest surviving theatre in Anatolia, while five re-erected columns mark the 2nd-century Apollo Temple at the harbour entrance. A Roman aqueduct from 25 BC still runs roughly 30 km inland alongside an earlier 1175 BC Hittite structure. Tourism development that began in the 1960s reshaped the ancient settlement into a modern resort. Today the ruins sit directly beneath the hotels and restaurants that line the seafront.