Things to Do in Isparta: Lake Egirdir, the Rose Harvest and Kovada

--- title: "Isparta guide: a lake town, a Roman colony an hour north, and roses that last a few weeks" description: "An honest guide to Isparta, Turkey: Lake Eğirdir and the island suburb of Yeşilada, Pisidian Antioch at Yalvaç, Davraz, the Kovada and Kızıldağ national parks, Zindan Cave, Adada, and when the rose harvest actually happens." city: "Isparta" lang: "en" ---

Isparta: a lake town, a Roman colony an hour north, and a flower that exists for a few weeks a year

Three unrelated things share this province, and that is the whole point of coming. The first is the lake. Eğirdir covers 468 square kilometres and is Turkey's second largest freshwater lake. The town is not built beside it but inside it, on a promontory running out into the water, with an island suburb tied to the end by a causeway. You do not walk along the shore here. You walk surrounded by it. The second is Yalvaç. A little over an hour north of Eğirdir sits Pisidian Antioch, the central city among the eight colonies Augustus founded in Pisidia, and the place where Saint Paul delivered his first formal sermon. The third is the rose. Roughly 65 percent of the world's rose oil comes out of this province, and the visible version of that fact lasts three or four weeks a year.

The combination makes Isparta strange in a useful way. Davraz is 25 km from Eğirdir. A ski mountain that close to a lake town is unusual in Turkey. In early March you can be on the piste in the morning and sitting by the water in the afternoon, with half an hour of driving between them. The same logic applies north: you can spend a day in a Roman colony and sleep in the same lakeside room.

Who is it for? People who like picking one base and radiating outwards. Eğirdir is small, and Yalvaç, Kovada, Sütçüler and Aksu are all day trips from it. People who care about ancient cities, because Pisidian Antioch fills a day on its own and Adada makes the province serious for Pisidian archaeology. People following Christian pilgrimage routes, because of Paul. Walkers, because there are two national parks.

The mistake nearly everyone makes involves the rose. People read "Isparta, city of roses," arrive in July or September or April, drive out to the fields and find nothing. The rose is a crop, not a view. The harvest runs roughly mid-May to the end of June, a window of three or four weeks, and the picking happens before sunrise. Outside that window, a rose field is a row of thorny green shrubs. There is nothing wrong with that, but it is not worth a journey. The good news is that Isparta stands up perfectly well without the rose. The bad news is that if roses are why you came and your dates are wrong, nothing fixes it.

Quick answer

Base yourself in Eğirdir and radiate out. If roses are the reason, get the dates right first.

• Stay in Eğirdir, not Isparta city. The lake is there and the distances make more sense from there.
• Two nights minimum, three is better. One day for Eğirdir and the lake, one for Yalvaç, one for the parks and caves.
• Rose window: roughly mid-May to late June. Picking starts before sunrise and is done by about 10am.
• Davraz is a winter trip. Kovada and Adada are late summer and autumn. The two do not fit in one visit.
• Pisidian Antioch is at Yalvaç, about an hour from Eğirdir. Do the museum first; the stones make sense afterwards.
• Sagalassos is not in Isparta. It is in Burdur. Keep it off this itinerary.

1. Lake Eğirdir

468 square kilometres, Turkey's second largest freshwater lake, and fourth largest natural lake overall after Van, Tuz and Beyşehir. It sits in a basin opened by tectonic movement and karst action together, which explains the colour. Karstic ground keeps the water clear, so the lake reads blue even under cloud.

What matters here is not the size but the relationship between the water and the town. Eğirdir does not face the lake, it enters it. So you do not need to hunt for a viewpoint. There is water at the end of every street.

Water levels have dropped over the years, which means the shoreline no longer matches older maps. You will notice old jetties now sitting on dry land. The lake is also a drinking water source, so swimming access is limited and forbidden in places. If you plan to swim, verify officially which points are open rather than guessing from what looks inviting.

2. Eğirdir Castle

The wall remains sit on the neck of the promontory, at the narrow point where the peninsula joins the mainland. That position is not accidental. A promontory can only be attacked across its neck, so the fortification went exactly there.

Set your expectations. This is not a castle you tour, it is a castle that remains. Most of the walls are down, and some of the stone was quarried away over later centuries to build houses. The walkable part takes fifteen or twenty minutes.

It earns its place for the view and the scale. Climb up, look north, and the whole logic of the town resolves in one glance: a thin strip of land pushes into the water, houses line up along it, and the island sits at the far end. That structure is invisible while you are walking through it at ground level. Check officially for access and opening hours.

3. Hızır Bey Mosque

A mosque from the Hamitoğulları period in the centre of town, sharing a courtyard with the medrese. This is the historic core of Eğirdir: mosque, medrese and bazaar side by side, all within a few paces.

Look at the wood. This mosque belongs to the Anatolian tradition of timber-columned prayer halls. It is not a stone shell with a dome dropped on it. Inside, wooden posts carry the roof and a wooden ceiling sits above you. The type is characteristic of the beylik period that followed the Seljuks in this region, and the sense of space is nothing like the domed Ottoman mosques of the big cities. It feels low, warm and dim.

Twenty minutes. It is an active mosque, so work around prayer times, and pause in the courtyard before you go in. The way the mosque and medrese were composed together is legible from out there and disappears once you step inside.

4. The caravanserai of Kayhusraw II

On the edge of Eğirdir, the remains of a caravanserai from the reign of the Seljuk sultan Ghiyath al-Din Kayhusraw II. The building itself is largely gone, and the pile of stone is hard to read unless you know what it was.

The story is not in the ruin, it is in the doorway. The caravanserai's carved portal was removed and rebuilt into the Dündar Bey Medrese in the centre of town. So the elaborate Seljuk gateway you admire in the Eğirdir bazaar actually belongs out here. The medrese was built in 1301 by Dündar Bey of the Hamitoğulları, restored after 1960, and today functions as a marketplace.

Do it in this order: come here first, look at what is left, then walk into the centre and find the portal. Reversed, the gate is just a handsome gate. In this order, you watch one building get dismantled into another, and you understand how ordinary the reuse of stone was in Anatolia.

5. Yeşilada

The island neighbourhood out in the lake, joined to town by a causeway. It was once genuinely an island reached by boat. Now you walk across, roughly a kilometre with water on both sides.

This is the real substance of Eğirdir. The island is small and you can circle it in half an hour, and the whole time you are looking at water, because there is no other direction to look. Most of the houses are old Greek or fishermen's houses and a number are now guesthouses. The lanes are narrow and hostile to cars, which makes walking easy.

Staying on the island and staying in town are two different trips. On the island, evening arrives and the noise stops and you are left with the sound of water. The town side has more life, more shops and more choice. Twenty minutes on foot separates them, so the decision is a real one.

Walk out onto the causeway and face west at sunset. It is the best free thing here.

6. Ayastefanos Church

A Greek church standing in the middle of the island's built fabric, the most visible survivor of what Yeşilada was before the population exchange.

Seeing it is how you read the island correctly. Today Yeşilada looks like a lakeside holiday quarter. But most of the houses here have a history reaching back before 1923, when this was a Greek fishing settlement. The church is that past left standing more or less by accident, and it explains why the buildings around it look the way they do.

It is closed to worship. You see it from outside and from the surrounding lanes; the state of the interior and whether access is open varies by season. Do not miss the key point: the church is embedded in the island fabric rather than set apart in its own compound. Which means that while looking for it you have already walked the oldest lanes on the island, and that is the actual reward.

7. Davraz mountain and ski centre

2,637 m, and 25 km from both Isparta and Eğirdir. Read that again, because it is the oddest thing about this province: you can ski and sit by a lake on the same day. There are not many places in Turkey where that works.

The runs are on the north face, and from up there Lake Eğirdir and the Isparta plain appear together. Snow quality is good, depths reach two metres in places, and the season can stretch into mid-April. There are safe routes for beginners and descents of up to 6 km for people who know what they are doing. It is 58 km from Süleyman Demirel Airport and 154 km from Antalya.

In summer the mountain works independently of skiing, for walking and for the view. Season dates, piste conditions, whether the lifts are running and what any of it costs change from year to year, so verify officially before you go. The coordinate here is the summit; the ski centre base sits lower on the north face.

8. Lake Hoyran

The northern extension of Lake Eğirdir. Technically the same body of water, and yet completely different in character: shallow, reedy and full of birds. Arriving here after the deep, blue, clear lake to the south is disorienting.

Depth explains it. Hoyran is shallow, so it warms, so it holds vegetation, and the vegetation brings the birds. By late summer the reed beds thicken, the water pulls back and parts of it read as marsh. In winter and spring the water rises again.

Do not come here as an excursion. Come as a stop on the way. Driving from Eğirdir to Yalvaç you pass along the lake anyway, and there are a few places to pull over. Bring binoculars if you have them. If not, stop for ten minutes somewhere along the road and watch how the lake narrows northwards and turns into reed.

9. Ertokuş Han

A Seljuk caravanserai at Gelendost, northeast of Eğirdir. Small, plain and usually completely empty.

If caravanserais are not your thing, skip it, and let us be honest about that. Do not expect anything on the scale of Sultan Han. Ertokuş is not one of the great state-built monumental hans on a trunk road. It is a modest lodging building.

Which is exactly why it is interesting. The caravanserai network across Anatolia was not a handful of famous buildings. It was dozens of small and mid-sized hans spaced roughly a day's travel apart, and trade worked because of that spacing. Ertokuş is an ordinary link in that chain, and being ordinary it explains the system better than the famous ones do.

It barely detours you on the way to Yalvaç. Give it half an hour. Whether the gate is open can be uncertain, so verify.

10. Pisidian Antioch

Just northeast of Yalvaç, and after the lake this is the most important site in the province. It was the central city among eight colonies Augustus founded in Pisidia in 6 BC, and the only one granted the title Caesarea and the right of ius Italicum. This was not a provincial Roman town. It was a privileged colony that legally counted as Italian soil.

Its weight in Christian history follows from that. Paul and Barnabas arrived in AD 46 and Paul gave his first formal sermon here. The Church of Saint Paul on the site is among the earliest churches in Anatolia. That is why Yalvaç appears as a stop on Christian pilgrimage routes.

On the ground there is a temple of Augustus, Roman baths, a theatre, aqueducts and Byzantine churches. The city sits high and there is very little shade. You cover it on foot. Allow two or three hours, take a hat and water, and go early morning or late afternoon. Verify entry and hours officially.

11. Yalvaç Museum

The portable part of the ancient city lives here. Built between 1963 and 1966, it has three main halls, and the Classical Hall holds the statues, statue fragments, portraits and reliefs excavated at Antioch.

Take the order seriously: museum before the site. The reason is simple. What you see at Antioch is largely foundations, column bases and wall lines. The face of the city, the human figures, the portraits, the carving, is down here. See these first and you have something to place on top of the empty footings when you walk the site. Do it the other way round and the museum becomes a photo album of a place you have already left.

Watch for the mixture. Roman colonial culture and local Anatolian tradition meet in the same block of stone. The portraits are Roman; some of the workmanship and motifs are not.

An hour is enough. Verify hours and entry officially.

12. Gelincik Ana Cave

North of Yalvaç, a cave known for its stalactites and stalagmites, named after the Gelincik mountain nearby.

This one is a distance decision. It is a long way from the provincial centre and from Eğirdir, and the road is narrow and winding. Adding it to your Yalvaç day stretches that day considerably. Driving out from Eğirdir for the cave alone does not make sense.

If you are already in Yalvaç with half a day spare, that changes. Inside are the classic dripstone formations you would expect in karst country, but well preserved. The real gain is the drive: as you climb north the plain ends and forest begins, and you move into a version of Isparta that has nothing to do with the lake imagery the province is known for.

Whether it is open and on what terms varies. Verify officially before setting off, because it is a long way to drive to a closed gate.

13. The monumental cedar at Çamdağı

A protected Taurus cedar on Çamdağı, above Senirkent. The species is native to these mountains and individual trees are protected as natural monuments.

Would you drive out for a single tree? On its own, no. You will spend five minutes standing next to it. But this entry is here for the road, not the tree. The route climbing up from Senirkent takes you into the part of Isparta nobody discusses, the mountain belt in the northwest. The plain and the lake drop away and forest begins.

There is also the matter of scale. These trees are measured in centuries, and you only grasp that standing at the trunk. A Taurus cedar reaching this size is a slow business, and most of the forest around here was cut long before any of it got the chance.

Road conditions depend on the season. Do not attempt it in winter.

14. Kızıldağ National Park

59,400 hectares of black pine forest in the Şarkikaraağaç district, declared a national park on 20 February 1993.

Position matters here. The park looks out over the western shore of Lake Beyşehir, which means you are at the far eastern edge of Isparta. Getting here from Eğirdir is a serious drive and hard to do as a day trip. Coming from the Konya side it is much easier.

The business here is forest: the black pine belt, walking, camping and viewpoints over the lake. National park status brings real rules about camping and fires, and they are enforced, so find out officially which areas are open.

Standing on the shore of Lake Beyşehir may confuse you. Around 20 percent of that lake lies inside Isparta and the rest is in Konya. So the water in front of you is partly Isparta's in a technical sense, but the main body of the lake and the town that shares its name are on the Konya side.

15. Zindan Cave

About 2 km northeast of Aksu town, at 1,300 m, a horizontal cave 756 m long. A stream runs through it and the system remains partly active.

This is the most layered place in the province. At the entrance there are mosaics depicting Eurymedon, the river god, and beside it stand an ancient open-air temple to Eurymedon, a Roman bridge and the remains of a monastery church. Finds run from the Hellenistic period through to the Seljuks. So this is a geological site and an archaeological one at once, and in 1988 it was protected under both designations.

Inside are the erosion and accumulation forms cut by the underground stream, stalactites, stalagmites, and a final section coated in mosaic-patterned calcite crystal that locals call the hamam.

Roughly 10,000 people visit a year, so it is not crowded. April to December is easier because water levels are lower. Check hours and entry officially.

16. Adada

A Pisidian city on the Sütçüler road in the south of the province. It is small next to Antioch and offers something entirely different.

The difference is that nobody is here. Antioch is visited, known and signposted. Adada sits beside the road with its temples largely standing and neither a guard nor a crowd anywhere near it. Walking through an ancient city alone is a rare thing, and Adada gives you that.

The abandonment is also why it survives. No modern settlement was built on top of it and its stone was not carted off into new buildings for centuries, so the temple walls are still up.

The Sütçüler road is mountainous and winding and it takes time from Eğirdir. You can pair it with Kovada, since both are south. The site looks open and unsupervised, but it is a protected archaeological area: do not take stone and do not climb the walls. Verify road conditions and access.

17. Kovada Lake National Park

South of Eğirdir, a small freshwater lake that is a natural extension of Lake Eğirdir. Surplus water from Eğirdir flows down here through a channel, so the two are physically linked.

That link explains the character. Kovada is small, shallow and ringed by forest: closed and still water, after the open, wide, windy face of Eğirdir. It lies north of the Gulf of Antalya along a fracture running north to south.

The walking trails inside the park are the actual reason to come. The lake alone is small, but the forest and the trails around it fill half a day comfortably. Late summer and autumn are best; summer is hot and there are insects.

Pairing it with Adada makes sense, as both sit south of Eğirdir. Verify entry, camping permission and trail conditions officially.

18. Isparta Grand Mosque (Kutlu Bey Mosque)

The oldest mosque site in the city centre. The story here is less the building than the number of times it has been knocked down and put back up.

According to its endowment deed, a mosque known to exist in 1429 stood on this spot. Abdülhamid II ordered it rebuilt on the old foundations in 1899 and the new mosque was finished in 1904. That building came down in the earthquake of 1914. What you see today was built in 1922.

So do not read the name "Grand Mosque" and expect a fifteenth-century structure. Set the expectation properly and the building gets interesting: one site has carried the same function for six hundred years while the thing standing on it changed three times. You can also read Isparta's position in an earthquake zone straight off that timeline.

You are in the city centre, so the mosque is not a trip by itself. Isparta Museum is about 800 m north. Do both. Half a day covers the centre.

19. The rose fields

This is a region, not a point. The rose belt spreads across the plains of central Isparta, Gönen, Atabey, Keçiborlu, Uluborlu and Senirkent. The coordinate here is an approximate centre of that belt, not an address to drive to.

The numbers are serious. Around 65 percent of world rose oil production comes from Isparta, and the province accounts for roughly 80 percent of Turkey's output. Some 10,000 families make a living from it. It started in 1888, when Müftüzade İsmail Efendi brought rose cuttings from the Kazanlak region of Bulgaria and planted them in the Gülcü neighbourhood.

The reality is that these are working farms, not attractions. Most are private property with people working in them. Do not walk in uninvited and do not pick. During the harvest you can watch the picking from the roadside, and that is enough.

Timing is everything. Read the section below.

20. Süleyman Demirel's mausoleum and democracy museum

At İslamköy in the Atabey district. Süleyman Demirel, Turkey's ninth president, was born here; the house he was born in became the Demirel House and Democracy Museum, and his mausoleum is in the same village.

This entry is not for everyone. If Turkish politics does not interest you, skip it. If it does, what is here is worth the half hour. Demirel served as prime minister seven times, was removed from office twice by military intervention, and finished as president. The second half of the republic's history turns to a large extent around a man who came out of this village.

The house museum shows that at village scale: a village house, then Ankara. The distance between those two things is legible in the building itself.

The coordinate here is the mausoleum; the museum house is in the same village, within walking distance. Verify visiting hours officially. It is about half an hour from Eğirdir and closer still to Isparta city.

The rose season

This is where honesty matters, because getting it wrong is the single biggest mistake visitors to Isparta make.

The window is short. The oil rose flowers in May and June. Harvest begins roughly mid-May and runs three or four weeks through June. Some sources say 15 May to the end of June, others say late May through June. The discrepancy does not matter. What matters is that for about forty-five weeks of the year there is nothing to see.

Picking happens before sunrise. Workers are in the gardens before the sun is up and finish around 10am. The reason is chemical rather than romantic: heat and sunlight drive the oil out of the flower, so the blooms are cut while cool and still wet with dew, and distilled the same day. If you want to see the harvest you need to be at the fields around 5am. Arrive at 11 and the work is finished and the field is empty.

What is there outside the window? Shrubs. The oil rose is not a showy plant, and out of harvest it is a thorny green row. You will not find the sea of pink from the photographs.

The dates move. The start depends on the weather and shifts year to year, and a hot spring compresses the window. The Isparta International Rose Festival is usually held in late May or early June and the municipality announces the dates annually; verify officially.

One last note: if you plan to buy rose oil, be careful about purity. This guide names no companies and quotes no prices.

Getting there

By air. Isparta Süleyman Demirel Airport has limited service. Most people fly into Antalya and drive. Antalya to Isparta is around 130 km, and 154 km to Davraz.

By road. Isparta sits on the Antalya to Afyon axis and bus connections are good, with direct services from Ankara, İzmir and İstanbul. Eğirdir is reached via Isparta and the hop between them is short.

By rail. Eğirdir has a station; verify current services officially.

By car. Plainly: without a car, half of this list does not happen. Adada, Kovada, Zindan, Gelincik Ana, Kızıldağ and the rose fields are not reachable on public transport. The Eğirdir to Isparta to Yalvaç axis works by bus. Nothing else does.

Distances. Yalvaç is about an hour from Eğirdir, Davraz is 25 km, Kovada is a little over half an hour south, and Sütçüler and Adada are further out on mountain roads. Kızıldağ is at the eastern edge of the province and is a stretch as a day trip.

When to go

Mid-May to late June. The rose window. Work in the fields, good weather, the lake beginning to warm. It is also the busiest stretch of the year, and rooms get tight during festival week.

September and October. To my mind the best time in the province. The heat has broken, the lake is still warm, Kovada and Adada are comfortable, and the crowds have gone. No roses, but the rest of Isparta does not depend on them.

July and August. Hot. The lakeside copes, but there is no shade at Antioch and walking an ancient city at midday is punishing. Start early.

December to March. Davraz season. Snow depths can hit two metres and skiing can run into mid-April. Mountain roads are largely out of play in this period; do not attempt places like Kızıldağ or Çamdağı in winter.

April. In between: skiing is ending, roses have not started.

What to eat

Lake fish. The fish out of Eğirdir is central to eating here. Carp is common, and crayfish is the lake's other known product. There are seasons and fishing bans, so ask what actually came in that day. Printed on a menu does not mean fresh.

Rose jam. It looks like a souvenir and it is a genuine local product, made from the petals of the oil rose and eaten at breakfast. Rose Turkish delight, rose syrup and rose water run along the same line. The taste is lighter than you expect: floral and slightly sour rather than perfumed.

Isparta kebabı. The province's own kebab. It is not identical everywhere you find it and the recipe shifts from place to place. Isparta is not competing with the southeast on kebab culture, but it has its own version and it is worth ordering.

Apples. This is serious apple country and they are sold at the roadside in autumn.

This guide names no restaurants. Walk Yeşilada and the lakefront, and go into the one that is full.

Frequently asked questions

**When should I go to see the rose fields?** Roughly mid-May to the end of June. Picking starts before sunrise and finishes around 10am, so you need to be at the fields early. Outside that window there is nothing to see but rows of green shrub. The start date shifts with the weather, so check with a local source before you commit to dates.

**Is Sagalassos in Isparta?** No. Sagalassos is in Burdur province, about 7 km northeast of Ağlasun town. It gets confused because it is close to Isparta and many tours combine the two, but administratively it is Burdur. Keep it off your Isparta itinerary and see our Burdur guide.

**Are Lake Beyşehir and Lake Burdur in Isparta?** Partly. Around 20 percent of Lake Beyşehir falls inside Isparta, on the Şarkikaraağaç and Yenişarbademli side; the other 80 percent and the town itself are in Konya. Lake Burdur is likewise split between Burdur and Isparta, with the Isparta share falling in the Keçiborlu district. Both are border lakes whose main bodies belong to neighbouring provinces. Isparta's lake is Eğirdir.

**How many days do I need?** Two nights minimum, three is better. One day for Eğirdir, the lake and Yeşilada. One for Yalvaç: museum then Pisidian Antioch. One for the south: Kovada and Adada, or Zindan Cave. Isparta city is half a day. If you are here to ski, Davraz is a day of its own.

**Can I do it without a car?** Partly. You can move between Eğirdir, Isparta city and Yalvaç by bus, and basing yourself in Eğirdir to walk the town, the lake and the island works completely. But Adada, Kovada, Zindan, Kızıldağ and the rose fields need a car. Arrive without one and you will see the lake and the ancient cities, but not the wild half of the province.