Side Ören Yeri

This guide to the ancient port ruins at Side, near Antalya, traces how the Cilician pirates turned this harbor into the Mediterranean's principal hub for kidnapping and selling captives in the first century BCE. It follows the wealth that piracy brought the city, funding its theatre and temples, and the Roman general given sweeping emergency powers in 67 BCE to hunt the fleets down. Listen with the harbor in view; the water looks much as it did then.