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A Museum Day in Antalya by AntRay

In Antalya the tram belongs to three different eras.

Radar TürkiyeRadar Türkiye15 Ekim 2026
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A Museum Day in Antalya by AntRay

In Antalya the tram belongs to three different eras. The heritage line that opened in 1999 was the city's first rail system; the modern line between Fatih and Meydan arrived in 2009, in 2016 the rails reached the Expo site and the airport, and between 2019 and 2021 the third line, descending from Varsak to Müze, was completed. Today all three lines are used with a single card, and most of Antalya's city-centre museums stand within a few hundred metres of these rails. This article explains how to build a museum day by tram, starting in the morning at the Expo site, descending from Kalekapısı into the museums of Kaleiçi and ending in the evening at Düden. We give no fares and no timetables; both change, and the current information sits on the Antalya Ulaşım website.

Three lines and the logic of transfers

Knowing the lines by name is half of planning the day. T1 is the main line, descending from Fatih in Kepez to the city centre and splitting into three branches east of Meydan. Operated by Antalya Ulaşım A.Ş., its branches run as T1A to the airport, T1B to the Expo site and, since 2024, T1C to Aksu; the Otogar and Çallı stops are underground. T2 is the heritage tram running between Müze and Zerdalilik; there are eleven stops along a line of four and a half kilometres, and stops such as Kale Kapısı, Üç Kapılar and Cumhuriyet Meydanı fall right on the edge of Kaleiçi. T3 runs from Varsak through Kepez and descends to Müze via Batıgar, Akdeniz University and the training and research hospital; the section between Atatürk and Varsak opened in 2019 and the extension to Müze in 2021.

Transfers happen at three points. From T1 to T3 you change at the Otogar stop; T3 calls this stop Batıgar and it is its only underground station. From T1 to the heritage line you get off at İsmetpaşa and walk a few steps to the Kale Kapısı stop. T2 and T3 meet at the Müze stop. The Antalyakart is tapped at the turnstile; alongside the personalised card, the unnamed full card, the disposable card, the NFC card loaded onto a phone and contactless bank cards are accepted. Full and personalised cards carry a transfer right; because the duration and conditions of the transfer change from time to time, check that too on the Antalya Ulaşım page. Folding bicycles travel free, and pushchairs and wheelchairs are accepted.

One more note is needed. The heritage tram suspended its services after a fire on 23 June 2026; the municipality announced that the line would not be removed and that services would resume once the vehicles were renewed. The line was closed while this article was being prepared. The distance between Kale Kapısı and Müze is walkable anyway, so the plan does not collapse if the heritage line is closed; you simply walk instead of taking T2, or use the bus on the same route.

Morning at the Expo site

Start the day at Expo with T1B. The site in Aksu covers 1,121 decares and is the legacy of the botanical Expo that opened on 23 April 2016 with the theme of flowers and children; the exhibition ran for six months and was then extended to the end of the year. The site now belongs to the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry; fairs and congresses are held here, and some sections are kept open to visitors. The Antalya Metropolitan Municipality page lists what remains: the Expo Tower, the children's science and technology centre, the congress building, the Agriculture and Biodiversity Museum, Expo Lake, the biodiversity trail, the children's island, the country gardens and two amphitheatres. The tower is the symbol of the site; the Ministry's news item gives its height as 100.7 metres, a lift takes you up to the observation deck, and the Aksu plain and the Taurus foothills spread out beneath you. On days with a large event the visiting arrangements may change; find out whether the site is open before you go.

The return from Expo to the city is again by T1B. The tram runs on the flat from Aksu to Meydan; the airport and Aksu sections are on a viaduct, and greenhouses and citrus orchards show through the window. For the museum day the stop to get off at is İsmetpaşa.

Kalekapısı and the Clock Tower

From İsmetpaşa, Kale Kapısı is a few minutes on foot. This was the main landward gate of Kaleiçi; the roads from the east, the west and the north ended at this gate. The Metropolitan Municipality's Kaleiçi inventory writes that the gate was first mentioned by İbn Bibi in connection with the sieges of 1207 and 1216, that it was also known as Pazar Kapısı and Çarşı Kapısı, and that it had been demolished by the years of the First World War. The gate's bastion still stands and the Clock Tower sits on top of it. The tower's date differs between two sources: the Metropolitan Municipality writes that it was built in 1921 on the initiative of people from İzmir who had migrated to Antalya after the occupation of İzmir, while the Wikipedia article gives 1901. Both sources agree that until the 1940s the tower had a dome; in the 2022 restoration a replica of that dome was rebuilt. There is a clock on each of the four faces. The Attalos statue in the middle of the square tells of the city's founder; the 2.60 metre statue was designed after a torso in Berlin and a separate head.

The museums of Kaleiçi

Once you enter Kaleiçi from Kale Kapısı the museums are within walking distance of each other. The Suna and İnan Kıraç Kaleiçi Museum, on Kocatepe Street in the Barbaros neighbourhood, consists of two buildings. The two-storey nineteenth-century Antalya house is arranged as an ethnography museum; scenes such as the serving of coffee, the groom's shave and the henna night are recreated with mannequins. The second building in the garden is the Church of Aya Yorgi, repaired in 1863 and today an exhibition hall; the main hall holds the collection of Çanakkale ceramics and the upper floor holds temporary exhibitions. The museum belongs to the Research Institute on Mediterranean Civilisations, whose building stands directly opposite.

Going down to the yacht harbour you reach the Antalya Toy Museum. Opened by the Metropolitan Municipality on 23 April 2011 with the writer Sunay Akın as adviser, the museum occupies a building of about 650 square metres in the harbour; around three thousand toys made between 1870 and 1980, from many countries from Germany to Japan, are displayed in ten sections. If you are travelling with a child this becomes the longest stop of the day. The third museum is the Atatürk House and Museum; the house of Hacı İlyas Dayıoğlu, an Antalya Greek, was used as the Italian Lyceum in the occupation years, passed to the Special Provincial Administration after the population exchange and was presented in 1930 to Atatürk when he came to the city. Add Hadrian's Gate next to the Üç Kapılar stop to this walk; if T2 is running you can make the hops between museums on the heritage tram.

Waiting for the Antalya Museum

The museum day in the title should have included the Antalya Museum; today it does not. The museum's foundations were laid in 1919 when the teacher Süleyman Fikri Erten had himself appointed honorary antiquities officer to protect artefacts during the occupation years; the museum was founded in Kaleiçi in 1922 and moved to its building on Konyaaltı Avenue in 1972. With fourteen exhibition halls, a children's section and open-air galleries it became the home of the Perge statues, the sarcophagi and the finds of Lycia, Pamphylia and Pisidia; in 1988 it received the Council of Europe's museum of the year award. The building was closed to visitors on 16 July 2025 on the grounds that it was not earthquake-resistant, and it was demolished in September 2025. About a hundred thousand artefacts were packed and placed in climate-controlled containers in the museum garden; the new building is targeted for completion at the end of 2026. The Ministry's museum page today reads "closed to visitors". For this reason the Müze stop is a transfer point for this article, not a destination; when the museum reopens, the day should begin here.

To Düden by tram

The Müze stop is the start of T3, and this line is the way to end the day with nature. The tram climbs to Varsak via Akdeniz University, Batıgar and the neighbourhoods of Kepez. The Upper Düden Waterfall is about a kilometre from Varsak; it is also known locally as the İskender Waterfall and was laid out as a recreation area by the State Hydraulic Works between 1970 and 1972. Since August 2026 payment at the entrance turnstiles can be made with the Antalyakart, so the card you have used all day works here too. The Lower Düden, which plunges from the cliffs into the sea, is on the Lara side; it is the second branch of the water coming from the Kepez plant and falls forty metres into the sea. The tram does not go there; a municipal bus from around Meydan is needed. Rather than choosing both in a single day, we suggest spending the evening light in the wooded valley of the Upper Düden.

The order of the day and a few suggestions

The suggested order is this: Expo by T1B in the morning, İsmetpaşa and the Clock Tower before noon, the three museums of Kaleiçi in the afternoon, Düden by T3 from the Müze stop. Those arriving from the airport can descend directly to the centre by T1A, but Expo and the airport are separate branches; to reach Expo, check before Yonca Kavşak that you have boarded the right branch. There is no tram inside Kaleiçi; the descents and climbs are stone-paved and steep, so comfortable shoes are essential. The closed days and hours of the museums sit on their own pages; look at the institute's site for the Kaleiçi Museum, the Metropolitan Municipality for the toy museum and the Ministry page for the Antalya Museum. The state of the lines cannot be called fixed either; in 2026 the heritage line stayed closed for months, and in 2025 the airport station was split into arriving and departing passengers. A single look at the Antalya Ulaşım route map before setting out is the shortest and most useful preparation of the day.

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