Hadrian's Gate

Hadrian's Gate in Antalya opens with what's missing: the bronze letters that once spelled the emperor's name are scattered across museums in Vienna, Berlin, London, and Oxford, pried loose by nineteenth-century travelers. You'll hear how the arch was built in 130 AD when Hadrian visited Attaleia, funded by a local patron named Julia Sancta, and how its Greek inscriptions carefully honored his adoptive father Trajan. The guide traces the political stakes behind that gesture, and how the gate later vanished into the city's Seljuk walls before resurfacing. Look down at the grooves worn into the paving stones by centuries of cart wheels.