From the Expo Grounds to DokumaPark, the Two Faces of the Düden River

When the tram reaches the end of the line at Expo station, the main entrance stands in front of you and the tower rises on the western wing directly opposite the gate. The site covers 1,121 decares in the Aksu district, more than a hundred hectares; two hours will not cover all of it on foot, so start the walk at the tower and finish it around the lake. The Expo Tower is 100.7 metres high with seventeen storeys; its three leaved peony shaped platform echoes the three arches of Hadrian's Gate, the emblem of Antalya. Three lifts carry visitors to the observation deck, and from there the whole exhibition plain, the Aksu lowland, the Taurus to the north and the sea to the south all appear at once. Morning light falls on the mountain side, so go up the tower first; by afternoon the haze wipes out the plain. Check the current visiting arrangements for the tower and the grounds on the Metropolitan Municipality's website. The exhibition opened on 23 April 2016 and closed on 30 October, and the site has been kept open to visitors ever since. It was Turkey's first international horticultural exhibition and was staged under the theme Flowers and Children, which is why half the site seems built for gardens and the other half for children.

Back on the ground, walk from Expo Square towards the lake. On the way is Turkey's first Museum of Agriculture and Biodiversity; its display follows the four sub themes that framed the exhibition, history, biodiversity, sustainability and green cities. Around twenty five thousand plants of a hundred and twenty species were planted for the exhibition; in spring these gardens flower, in autumn you see more leafy green than blossom. The oldest resident of the grounds is an olive tree recorded as 945 years old; it stands near the museum and the trunk alone is worth the detour. If you come with children, put Children's Island and the Children's Science and Technology Centre at the middle of your route; these are the busiest buildings left from the exhibition. The country gardens are the real legacy of the show. More than fifty countries took part officially and most of them fitted their own garden tradition into a small plot; read the signs as you pass from garden to garden, because the identity of many lies not in the plants but in the layout.

Expo Lake sits at the centre of the grounds with a walking path around it. Along the shore come, in turn, the peony shaped terrace, the large and small amphitheatres, Expo Hill and Expo Forest; the hill is a modest rise, but it gives the same view to those who skip the tower. The site is largely open and shadeless, so put your hat on here and fill your bottle at the entrance. The meadow gardens and the mosaic plant sculptures are on the western side of the lake; the best photographic backdrop is the southern shore, where the tower is reflected in the water. The green city theme did not stay on paper here; movement inside the grounds was planned around cycling and walking. On the way out, step into the exhibition greenhouse; as an indoor space it makes a short rest stop on a hot day. The site is the last stop of the AntRay T1 line and close to the airport; the twenty kilometre tram extension was built precisely for these grounds and today links Aksu to the centre. The next stop is Lower Düden in Lara; you can take the tram back to Meydan and switch to a bus, or turn west by car along the airport road.

Source: Antalya Büyükşehir Belediyesi, Expo 2016 Antalya.

As soon as you enter Düden Park on Lara Caddesi, the sound of the water shows the way; the waterfall is at the seaward end of the park. Here the Düden River drops straight into the Mediterranean over a travertine cliff of about forty metres, and this is the only waterfall in Antalya that can be watched from a boat. It is also known locally as Karpuzkaldıran. The military facility beside it carries the same name, so do not be confused by the signs. You are eight kilometres from the city centre, and Lara Caddesi continues east from here towards the Lara beaches. The park itself is a flat green area on top of the cliff. The walking path runs along the shore and there are three separate points from which to watch the fall, from above, from the side and from the sea. Where the water strikes the sea a permanent cloud of mist hangs in the air, and depending on the wind it drifts right into the park. Go first to the railed viewing terrace on top, where the water breaks away right beneath your feet and the wind carries the cloud of spray into your face. Then walk towards the Youth Park side at the eastern end of the park; only from here does the full height of the fall fit into a single frame. At midday the sun stands above the waterfall and a rainbow forms in the spray, the most rewarding moment for photographs.

The third viewpoint is from the sea. Boats leaving the small jetty below the park go right up to the face of the fall and approach the point where the water hits the sea; boat trips are run, so ask about departures and prices at the jetty or check the Culture Portal information against a current source. If you are not taking a boat, there is no path down to the foot of the cliff; the sea is the only way to get near the water. This is the same water you will see at Upper Düden on the third stop; one of the channels of the river, divided in two at the Koyunlar regulator after Düdenbaşı, reaches here nine kilometres later. The flow of the fall therefore depends on the season and the regulator; in winter and spring it is full, by late summer you may find it thinner. In 2020 the Düden Waterfall and River were declared a strictly protected sensitive area by presidential decision, and there are signs in the park recalling this status.

Inside the park there is a picnic area, a car park and benches to rest on; the trees are young, so shade is scarce, and this stop should not run much over an hour. If you have children with you, keep away from the railings; the cliff edge is high and the ground stays wet with spray. Walking towards the western end of the park, the cliff line reveals the coastal strip stretching from Lara to Konyaaltı; the cliffs of Antalya are the edge of the widest tufa plateau in the world, and the Düden leaps off precisely the rim of that plateau. On the sea side, the silhouette of the Beydağları lies on the southern horizon. The next stop is Upper Düden in Kepez at the far end of the city; about half an hour by car through town, or by bus with a change in the centre. Before you leave, listen to the sound of the water in the park for a minute, because at the third stop you will hear the same water inside a forest, with a far softer voice.

Source: Kültür Portalı, Aşağı Düden Şelalesi.

Upper Düden lies some ten kilometres from the city centre, in Şelale Mahallesi in Kepez, inside a park. Being only a kilometre from Varsak, it counts as the northern edge of Kepez. The entrance is organised and fenced, and the turnstile can also be passed with Antalyakart. Check the Metropolitan Municipality and Antalya Ulaşım announcements for current visiting arrangements and opening hours. Once through the gate, the sound draws you down towards the cascade pool; stay on the upper path first and see where the water comes from. The water here arrives by canal from the Kepez hydroelectric plant and pours over the rock into the pool at a point called Düdenbaşı; at the bottom of the pool is the karstic spring where the Düden River ends its underground journey and comes to the surface. The river rises at the Kırkgöz springs in Döşemealtı, vanishes into the Bıyıklı sinkhole, travels fourteen kilometres underground, appears for a moment in the Varsak depression, sinks again and emerges here two kilometres later. Even on days when no water flows on the surface, at least ten cubic metres a second rise from this spring; the average is fifteen to sixteen, and up to ninety four has been measured in flood. The pool in front of you is therefore not the foot of a waterfall but the mouth of an underground river.

The path circles the pool and descends to the side of the cascade; the steps are wet and mossy, so keep hold of the rail. The finest frame is from the far bank of the pool, from the point that takes in the white curtain of water together with the dark rock behind it; in the afternoon the light comes from the west and the water shines, in the morning the rock stays in shadow. The site was laid out as a picnic ground by the State Hydraulic Works between 1970 and 1972 and still keeps that arrangement of plane trees and pines; the tables and fountains are on the flat ground above the path. The cascade is also called the Alexander Waterfall. Alexander the Great is said to have watered his army here during the Pamphylian campaign, and the sources pass this on as a tradition. Its popular name is the Düdenbaşı Waterfall, because this is exactly where the river comes to the surface.

Notice how differently the water behaves here. At the second stop the same river was leaping forty metres into the open sea; here it gathers in a pool, leaves the park as a calm stream and divides into two channels at the Koyunlar regulator, one of which runs down to Lara. In the lower part of the park there is a streamside walking path; if time allows, walk ten minutes along the stream and back, since the colour of the water is greenest closest to the spring. Since 2020 the site has been part of the Düden Waterfall and River strictly protected sensitive area; entering the water and picnicking at the edge of the pool are forbidden. On summer weekends the park is crowded, while on a weekday afternoon you are almost alone. To the north are Varsak and the foothills, to the south the roofs of the city; the park is not high, but the shade and the humidity suddenly make it feel ten degrees cooler than the second stop. From here it is a ten minute drive through Kepez to DokumaPark; if you are going by bus, get off in the centre of Kepez and ask for Namık Kemal Bulvarı. Leave before four o'clock so you can give the last stop two and a half hours.

Source: Kültür Portalı, Düden Şelalesi.

Through the gatehouse on Namık Kemal Bulvarı you face not a park but a factory compound; the trees are so old and the buildings so low that the two blend into each other. This is the Antalya Yarn and Cotton Weaving Mill, founded in 1956 and in production from 1961; it turned the cotton of the Antalya plain into yarn and cloth, production stopped in 2003, and after a long legal process the 238 decare site became a public park in the hands of Kepez Municipality. In its busiest years the mill employed more than seventeen hundred workers and, from its staff housing to its nursery, was a small neighbourhood in its own right. The first phase opened on the last day of 2015. The principle was that no building would be demolished, no tree felled, and the structures restored to their 1960s state. Every building you see on the walk was therefore born with a factory function, and the signs at the entrances give the old names. Plan the route accordingly; go first into the Once Upon a Time Antalya Museum in the administration building, because once you have read the story of the city and the mill there, the rest falls into place. The complex is registered as an immovable cultural property.

The second call is the old nursery building, today the Anatolian Toy Museum. Opened in 2017, it displays 13,800 toys in fifteen rooms on fifteen separate themes; the tradesmen's street diorama, the traditional Anatolian toys and the early Republican classroom are the rooms where people linger longest. The exit opens onto a garden where two monumental olive trees stand, one a thousand and the other eleven hundred years old; visitors with children spend at least half an hour in this garden, so plan for it. From there move to the mill's old warehouse; the Nostalgic Vehicle Museum shows cars, pickups and motorcycles that left their mark on Turkey's roads, and the collection also tells the story of the country's industrialisation. The canteen building has become a four room modern art gallery whose shows change by season; the transformer building was turned in 2021 into a library of more than a hundred thousand books. For children there is a real railway carriage library set on rails, with a station building added beside it in 2022.

The widest part of the park is the open air museum. On ten thousand square metres, 84 monuments of the Anatolian civilisations stand as models at 1/25 scale; until 2016 these models were in Konyaaltı, they were moved here during the seafront redevelopment and opened in museum form in 2018. The late afternoon light falls on the models from the side, the best hour of the day for photographs. As you walk among the models, remember the one real tower you saw at Expo in the morning; here stands a miniature of the same Hadrian's Gate. The science centre is in the mill's production building, twelve thousand square metres of experiment halls and workshops; check the opening and programme arrangements on the Kepez Municipality website, since most of the museums close on certain days. The Akseki stone buttoned house in front of the forest library and the second hand book market make a good ending for the last half hour of the day. The old staff canteen is a social facility restored to its original state, and the mill's retired workers still meet here; drink your tea here and look out at the garden. The shade of eucalyptus and pine comes from the trees the mill planted in the 1960s; this is exactly how the park differs from the Expo grounds of the morning, one was built for an exhibition, the other grew by itself for sixty years around a workplace. The park is close to the city, and the T3 line through Kepez and the buses take you back to the centre; check the nearest station and the lines on antalyaulasim.com.tr.

Source: Kepez Belediyesi, DokumaPark.