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Elmalı, a Mosque Complex, a Museum and Lake Avlan
Cultural

Elmalı, a Mosque Complex, a Museum and Lake Avlan

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Drive some 110 kilometres west of Antalya's coastline and into the Taurus, and a completely different Antalya begins.

Elmalı, Antalya
Cultural
Radar Editör
October 15, 2026

About Trip

Drive some 110 kilometres west of Antalya's coastline and into the Taurus, and a completely different Antalya begins. Elmalı is a highland town built on a plateau more than a thousand metres above sea level, west of the Beydağları range; to its north rises Elmalı Mountain, reaching 2,503 metres, and to its south stretches a wide plain covered in apple orchards. Winters are hard and summers cool; it is no accident that people from the coastal districts escape up here in summer. The town's name is synonymous with the apple, and roughly twelve percent of Turkey's apples come from this plain. But what makes Elmalı worth a day's outing is not only its climate: a mosque complex from the start of the seventeenth century stands in the middle of town, a museum has been set up in the old government house, streets are lined with timber houses with projecting bays, and south of the plain lie a lake and a cedar forest.

Getting there

Elmalı is reached by road from the city of Antalya; the road via Korkuteli comes down into the district from the west. Buses and minibuses leave Antalya's main bus station towards Elmalı; drivers follow the Elmalı signs on the Antalya-Korkuteli road. For those coming from Finike there is the Elmalı-Finike road; it passes beside Lake Avlan, and the turn-offs to the cedar forest are on this route. The road crosses mountain passes; start early in the morning so as not to be caught by darkness on the way back. The part of town worth seeing is explored on foot; for the lake and the forest a vehicle is essential.

The Ketencizade Ömer Paşa complex

Right in the centre of town, a cut-stone mosque set into the slope and the medrese facing it are the emblem of Elmalı. According to Semavi Eyice's entry in the TDV Encyclopaedia of Islam, the complex was built by Ketencizade Ömer Paşa of Manavgat; the six-line inscription above the portal gives the date 1019 of the Hijra, that is 1610. Evliya Çelebi, however, recorded the inscription date as 1016, that is 1607; this small discrepancy between the two sources remains unresolved today. The founder was an Ottoman administrator who rose from gatekeeper to chief usher and then to provincial governor; he is recorded as governor of Diyarbekir in 1603-1604 and governor-general of Tripoli in 1623.

The building should be looked at with an architectural eye. The mosque is square in plan and covered by a single lead-clad dome; the dome rests on four arches, with squinches making the transition at the corners. Three facades carry three buttresses of square section each; four windows in the lower row and two in the upper row order the facades. The prayer porch is covered by an arcade resting on marble columns with classical capitals; the great pointed-arched portal stands in the middle of this arcade. The tiles in the window tympana are considered among the last products of the İznik kilns; on one panel the signature of Resmi Mustafa of İznik can be read. The mihrab is of marble, the minbar has rosette reliefs on its balustrade, and the interior and the dome are covered in painted decoration. The minaret rises on a five-sided base, each face divided into panels with ogee arches; its balcony sits on muqarnas and it preserves the original form that Evliya Çelebi praised. According to Eyice the mosque was opened for worship in 1938 and repaired in 1968.

The medrese opposite the mosque is U-shaped in plan; thirteen equal cells are lined up behind a pointed-arched arcade, and the building is used today as a library. Because the mosque sits on the slope, the courtyard and the medrese roof lie below you when you look from the pavement; the best angle for a photograph is not from the street but down in the courtyard, looking at the dome from under the arcade. The town also has the Bey Hamamı mentioned by Evliya Çelebi; Eyice notes that there is no firm evidence that this bath belonged to the complex. The mosque is a working place of worship; visit outside prayer times, keep quiet inside and ask permission before taking photographs.

The Elmalı Museum

Near the complex, the former government house on Hükümet Caddesi has been the Elmalı Museum since 2011. The two-storey, centrally planned building is divided into eleven exhibition halls, three on the ground floor and eight upstairs, and the back garden is arranged as an open-air gallery. In the first hall on the ground floor, the Late Chalcolithic finds of Bağbaşı and the Early Bronze Age objects of Karataş-Semahöyük are displayed in eight cases. The most striking corner of the museum is the third hall: three pithos burials excavated from the Semahöyük cemetery are shown in their original positions, together with their skeletons and grave goods. A body crouched inside a jar tells the story of burial customs thousands of years ago in a way no label in any showcase can.

Upstairs are the finds from the Hacımusalar Höyük and Karaçakır excavations and from the Karaburun, Kızılbel and Bayındır tumuli. The third hall is given over to coins; Lycian city coins and Roman imperial coins are seen here. The fifth hall tells the story of the Elmalı Coins, known as the "Hoard of the Century". Some 1,900 silver coins found in an illegal dig in the village of Bayındır in 1984 were smuggled abroad and returned to Turkey in the late 1990s after a long legal struggle; the 14 decadrachms in the hoard doubled the number of decadrachms known in the world until then. One thing should be understood here: according to the sources, the original hoard is kept in the Antalya Museum, while the Elmalı Museum displays imitation pieces and the story of the discovery. In the back garden stand grave stelae, column fragments and architectural elements of the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine periods; in one corner stands a beehive stand illustrating the region's traditional beekeeping. Check the museum's closing days and opening hours on its official website, as they change with the season.

Historic streets and timber houses

When you leave the museum, choose not the main streets but the narrow lanes climbing uphill. According to the publication of the Antalya Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism, Elmalı's old bazaars, arcades and narrow streets preserve the fabric of an Anatolian town intact; the publication compares the double-bayed timber houses of Elmalı with the houses of Safranbolu. The region's cedar was used abundantly in the woodwork of these houses; stylised trees, floral motifs and six-pointed stars appear in the decoration. The same source says the grandest examples are on Aylar Sokağı in the Tahtamescit quarter, and adds that restoration work is continuing. The İplik Pazarı quarter around the complex is also the part of town where old houses are densest.

Pay attention as you walk: because the town is built on a slope, the streets drop steeply, whitewashed bays project over stone walls, and at the end of every street the plain and the mountain are always in view. Since the morning light comes from the east, the bayed facades photograph better before noon. Most of the houses are still lived in; do not peer in through garden gates and do not disturb the residents. The town's past can also be read in these streets: in the first years of the Ottoman state Elmalı was the centre of the sanjak of Teke, the sanjak beys came up here for the summer, and at the end of the nineteenth century the town counted twenty mosques, five baths and more than five hundred shops. After the great fire of 1940 the town was rebuilt; the timber fabric standing today belongs to the quarters that survived that fire or were repaired afterwards.

Lake Avlan

Leave town to the south, on the Finike road. At the southern end of the Elmalı plain, 1,030 metres above sea level, Avlan is a karstic lake that in its natural state covers some 850 hectares. The lake's recent history has to be told with caution, because the sources differ on dates: according to Wikipedia, under a decision taken in 1970 the lake was drained through a channel opened between 1975 and 1980 and turned into farmland; a news report from 2022 places the draining in 1977-78 and the return of the water in 1997-98. The point on which they agree is this: after the draining, the local climate was observed to become drier and waterbirds declined, and at the request of local people water was returned to the lake in the early 2000s; the highway that ran through the middle of the lake was moved to its eastern edge in 2012. In recent years the lake has receded again in dry summers and refilled in wet winters; the view you find in front of you therefore changes with the season and the year. Winter and early spring are the fullest times; expect nothing on the shore beyond walking and birdwatching.

The Çığlıkara cedar forest

The mountains rising south of the lake carry one of Turkey's most important cedar forests. According to the list of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Çığlıkara was declared a nature conservation area on 5 July 1991; it is one of thirty-two such areas in the country and comes under the 6th Regional Directorate in Antalya. The area is roughly 15,900 hectares and consists mainly of cedar of Lebanon; it harbours nearly four hundred plant species, some of them endemic. The forest holds old cedars registered as natural monuments; the best known is the tree called Koca Katran, estimated at about two thousand years old when it was registered in 1995, 25 metres tall and with a trunk circumference of more than 8 metres. The forest spreads over a plateau at around 1,850 metres; along the roadsides you will come across the nests of the red wood ants brought from Kızılcahamam and settled in the forest in the 1970s, so do not touch them.

The Provincial Directorate's publication writes that the road to the cedar forest and the Elmalı Cedar Research Forest branches off at the twentieth kilometre of the Elmalı-Finike road, north of Lake Avlan; the same road is the starting point for those climbing Kızlar Sivrisi, at 3,080 metres the highest summit of the Beydağları. The forest road may close in the snow months; this is a nature conservation area, so follow its rules and do not leave the marked road.

Day plan and season

The most sensible order is the town in the morning and the lake and forest in the afternoon. See the complex early, as the town wakes up; go into the museum when it opens and allow an hour; towards noon go out into the streets and, if you happen to be there on market day, look at the cheese, tarhana and weaving stalls in the bazaar. In the afternoon drive down to the Finike road, stop on the lakeshore, then turn onto the forest road and return to the asphalt before sunset. The best seasons for Elmalı are late May to June and September to early October; the apple harvest on the plain takes place in October, when the roadsides fill with crates. The town, noticeably cooler than the coast in July and August, is packed in the first week of September for the Yeşilyayla oil wrestling held for centuries; finding accommodation that week is difficult. In winter the plateau is snow-covered and the forest road may close.

Practical notes

The altitude is above a thousand metres; even in summer take an extra layer for the evening chill. There are no services at all on the lake and forest side; buy water and food in town. On the days the museum is closed, the streets and the complex can still be visited. There may be no phone signal in the cedar forest; do not leave the return time to those staying in the car, walk together. The road descending from Elmalı to Finike can be the continuation of the trip; going down to the coast and swimming on the same day is the shortest way to understand how vertical a province Antalya is when seen from this plateau.

Sources

Location - Elmalı, a Mosque Complex, a Museum and Lake Avlan

Trip Info
CityElmalı, Antalya
TypeCultural
DateOctober 15, 2026
SourceRadar Editör
Radar TürkiyeAuthorRadar TürkiyeVisit SourceGet Directions