Where to stay in Antalya: the best areas and resorts

Belek was purpose-built for the good life. Behind a long, sandy, Blue Flag coastline sits a run of championship golf courses, and between them and the sea, a parade of five-star resorts set in pine forest and landscaped gardens. There's not much of a town to speak of, and almost nobody minds.

This is all-inclusive at its most extravagant. Expect resorts with private beaches, multiple pools, spas with Turkish baths and as many as nine restaurants, and several that include free access to the Land of Legends theme park. Families are spoiled with aquaparks and kids' clubs; golfers can roll out of bed onto the fairway. Antalya airport is only around 30 km away, so transfers are short.

Side is a resort with a real heart. Its old town sits on a little peninsula among Roman ruins, where the columns of the Temple of Apollo stand at the water's edge and a great amphitheatre looms over the lanes of shops and harbour restaurants. Sunset at the temple is the classic evening ritual.

Long, sandy beaches run east and west, lined with resort hotels. You can stay a short stroll from the old town at a beachfront hotel in lush gardens, pick a family-friendly hotel on its own beach 3 km out, or a resort with a wooden dock over the water at Sorgun. Further east around Titreyengöl, hotels sit between pine forest, a lake and the sea. The Manavgat waterfalls are close by, and the airport is about an hour away.

South-west of Antalya, the coast road squeezes between the sea and the Taurus Mountains, and the scenery is the star. Kemer has a marina, a lively centre and a pebbly beach, while Tekirova and Beldibi stretch along pine-backed shores beneath the peaks of the Olympos national park. The water here is often clearer than on the sandier coast east of the city.

Resorts are big and family-friendly: a luxury all-inclusive on its own golden beach in Kemer, a Tekirova resort in a private bay with a mega aquapark, and Beldibi hotels backing onto the mountains, one with a Blue Flag beach and 24-hour food and drink. A couple even welcome pets. Allow around an hour from the airport.

Alanya is the Riviera's party town, built around a rocky headland topped by a medieval castle and hemmed in by beaches, including the famous Cleopatra Beach. The harbour is busy with pirate-style boat trips by day and bars and clubs by night, and the town has a real bustle that the big resort enclaves lack.

Hotels stretch for miles either side of town. In Oba, close to the centre, an adults-only, non-smoking hotel suits couples; further out in Konaklı and Alara, big ultra all-inclusive resorts sit on their own private beaches in spacious gardens. It's a long way from Antalya airport, some 130 km, but the smaller Gazipaşa-Alanya airport is much closer.

Antalya is a proper city, and its old quarter, Kaleiçi, is a joy: a maze of restored Ottoman houses, boutique hotels and courtyard restaurants inside old walls, entered through the triumphal arch of Hadrian's Gate and spilling down to a Roman harbour. East of the centre, Lara has a long sandy beach and a strip of big resort hotels close to the airport.

Stay in Kaleiçi itself at a spa hotel in the historic old town, or at the ultra-modern, all-white Su Hotel, which combines city convenience with a frontline beach. East of the old town, you'll find a stylish hotel 300 metres from its sister hotel's beach, and in Lara a hotel of individually designed rooms with a Turkish bath. Airport transfers are often around 15 to 20 minutes.

On the western side of the city, Konyaaltı Beach runs for kilometres along the bay, a broad sweep of pebbles backed by a park-lined promenade and a jaw-dropping wall of mountains. It is where locals come to swim, and it gives you a beach holiday with the restaurants, shops and old town of a real city ten minutes away.

Accommodation is mostly good-value apartments and small hotels: a smart hotel with an outdoor pool within a 15-minute walk of the beach, an apart-hotel 300 metres from the sand, and an adults-only hotel with a seasonal pool and sauna. For space, a cluster of villas with private pools sits in pine woods outside the city.