Burdur

i.The Lakes Region and the Pisidian Highlands

Burdur sits at the western edge of the great Lakes Region (Göller Yöresi) of southwestern Anatolia — the upland plateau country between the high Toros mountains to the south and the lower Mediterranean coast to the southwest, drained internally by a chain of closed-basin lakes. The provincial seat is on a slight elevation at the southern shore of Burdur Gölü, a substantial closed-basin saline lake of approximately 200 square kilometres. The country to the north and west rises into the Pisidian highlands and the modern Acıpayam plateau (in Denizli); to the south and east, the Toros ranges close off the country toward the Mediterranean coast around modern Antalya.

The province extends to 6,887 square kilometres and supports a population of 275,826 under the TÜİK 2024 count, organised into eleven districts: the central Merkez (~118,000), Bucak (the principal southern town on the Antalya road), Gölhisar, Ağlasun (the modern district at the foot of Sagalassos), Yeşilova (the principal town on Salda Gölü), Tefenni, Çavdır, Altınyayla, Karamanlı, Çeltikçi, and Kemer.

ii.From the Elmacık Locality to the Pisidian Country

The Burdur country preserves one of the oldest single human-occupation traces anywhere in Anatolia: the Elmacık Fossil Locality on the southern shore of Burdur Gölü, where stone tools and cut-marked mammoth bones have been dated to approximately 1.2 million years before present — Lower Palaeolithic occupation by archaic Homo. The site is one of the principal early-Pleistocene archaeological sites of southwest Asia.

Through the long Neolithic and Bronze Age centuries the country was an integrated part of the wider central-Anatolian and southwestern-Anatolian cultural sphere. By the classical period the country had become the heartland of Pisidia — the upland Greek-and-indigenous-Anatolian-population country of the western Toros highlands, governed locally by federated city-states and acknowledging in succession the suzerainty of the Achaemenid Persians, Alexander the Great (after the great campaign of 333 BCE that took Sagalassos), the Hellenistic Seleucids, the Pergamene kingdom, and from 25 BCE the Roman empire.

iii.Sagalassos — The Pisidian Capital (UNESCO Tentative 2009)

The most important single archaeological site in the province is Sagalassos — the great Pisidian city in the modern Ağlasun district, set at 1,500 metres elevation in a spectacular natural amphitheatre on the southern slopes of Akdağ. The city emerged as a fortified urban centre in the late 5th century BCE under Achaemenid Persian suzerainty; it was taken by Alexander the Great after a brief siege in 333 BCE; and it flourished as one of the principal Pisidian cities through the Hellenistic and the long Roman imperial period, reaching its monumental apogee in the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE.

The surviving monumental ensemble — recovered since 1990 by the continuing Belgian (Catholic University of Leuven) archaeological mission under Marc Waelkens and his successors — includes the upper agora with its great Antonine-period nymphaeum and bouleuterion; the lower agora with the Hadrianic monumental complex; the great theatre seating 9,000; the Roman baths complex; the Apollo Klarios temple; the Hadrianic Nymphaeum with its substantially restored façade; the Trajan and Hadrian gates; and the principal residential and industrial quarters. Sagalassos was placed on the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List in 2009 and is one of the principal candidate Anatolian cities for full inscription.

iv.Kibyra — Lycian Frontier City (UNESCO Tentative 2016)

The second principal classical city of the province is Kibyra — in the modern Gölhisar district, on the western frontier between Pisidia and Lycia. The city was relocated from an earlier site to its present mountainous setting in the 3rd century BCE by Pisidian migrants, and emerged in the Hellenistic and early-Roman centuries as the centre of the Kibyratis tetrapolis (a federation of Kibyra, Bubon, Balbura, and Oinoanda). The city's principal monumental survival is the great stadium at 195 metres long — the longest single ancient stadium in Asia Minor, with seating for 10,000.

Kibyra was also famous in antiquity for its iron-working and its damnatio-court tradition — it had a four-language judicial system (Pisidian, Greek, Lydian, and Solymian) and was one of the principal regional commercial centres of the Lycian-Pisidian frontier country. The site was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List in 2016; the principal continuing excavation programme has run since 2006 under the Mehmet Akif Ersoy Üniversitesi.

v.The Byzantine and Medieval Centuries

Through the long Byzantine centuries the Pisidian country declined from its Roman urban apogee but retained substantial regional importance as the seat of the thema of Anatolikon. Sagalassos was abandoned after the great Sagalassos earthquake of c. 590 CE; Kibyra continued through the early-Byzantine period before contracting to a small fortified town. The country was held by the Seljuks after the great Anatolian campaigns of the 1070s and 1080s, then in succession by the Hamidoğulları beylik (centred on Antalya and Eğirdir) in the late 13th and 14th centuries, and from 1391 by the Ottoman state under Bayezid I.

Through the long Ottoman centuries Burdur was a working sancak of the Konya and later Hüdavendigâr eyalets. The country was substantially affected by the 1914 Burdur earthquake (Mw 6.9, with substantial damage in the central Merkez district) and by the wider conditions of the closing Ottoman decades; the modern Republican-era town was substantially rebuilt under the 1920s and 1930s programmes.

vi.The Republic and the Modern Province

Under the early Republic Burdur was reorganised as one of the southwestern provinces of the new state. The 20th century brought the country the standard Republican apparatus — the modern road network connecting to the Antalya, Denizli, and Isparta highways; the substantial agricultural-irrigation programmes on the Burdur and Gölhisar plains; the development of the principal regional industrial economy (cement, marble, and the famous Burdur dairy products); and the principal educational institutions. The province is the seat of Mehmet Akif Ersoy Üniversitesi (founded 2006, named for the Burdur-born poet of the Turkish national anthem) — one of the principal new-generation southwest-Anatolian universities, with the continuing principal Kibyra excavation programme as one of its flagship research projects.

The modern provincial economy continues to rest on the broad agricultural base (the famous Burdur honey, the substantial roses and rose-oil tradition shared with neighbouring Isparta, the principal dairy production), the marble and cement industries of the southern district, and the increasing tourism centred on the Lakes Region, Sagalassos, Kibyra, and Salda Gölü.

vii.Salda Gölü — The Turquoise Lake

The most spectacular natural feature of the modern province is Salda Gölü in Yeşilova district — a closed-basin tectonic lake of approximately 45 square kilometres at 1,193 metres elevation, with an extraordinary turquoise colour produced by the very high concentration of dissolved magnesium-rich hydromagnesite in the water and the white hydromagnesite-bearing sediments on the lakebed. The lake is the second-deepest in Türkiye at 196 metres.

Salda gained substantial international scientific attention in 2020 when NASA identified the lake's hydromagnesite-and-stromatolite sedimentary structure as one of the closest terrestrial analogues to the floor of Jezero Crater on Mars (the landing site of the Perseverance rover), and a joint NASA-TÜBİTAK research programme has been conducted at the lake since for Martian-geology baseline studies. The lake is also a principal national tourism destination — the white beaches of the western shore (the "Beyaz Adalar," "White Islands") are sometimes called "Türkiye's Maldives" — and was placed under SİT-area protection in 2019 to manage the substantial tourism pressure.

viii.Burdur Gölü and the Insuyu Mağarası

Burdur Gölü, on the northern edge of the provincial seat, is the principal lake of the central country: a closed-basin saline lake of approximately 200 square kilometres, fed by intermittent streams from the surrounding country and held by no surface outlet. The lake is one of the principal Türkiye-side wintering grounds of the white-headed duck (Oxyura leucocephala) — one of the world's most threatened waterfowl species — and is on the Ramsar list of internationally important wetlands.

Five kilometres north of the city on the Isparta road stands the famous Insuyu Mağarası — a substantial karst show-cave system discovered in 1952, formally opened to tourism in 1965 as Türkiye's first tourist-developed cave. The cave's principal feature is the famous Köprü Salonu (the Bridge Hall) with the substantial underground lake of clear water; the cave was historically rich in stalactite formations, though substantial drought-driven hydrological change in the 2010s has affected the underground lake's water level.

ix.The Local Cuisine and the Burdur Şişi

The Burdur country has one of the most distinctive regional cuisines of southwestern Anatolia. The famous Burdur şişi is the regional kebap speciality — long, thin skewers of small-cut lamb cooked over wood fire, served with the local pide and the famous Burdur ayran. The Burdur kebabı (a slightly different preparation, with onions and tomato) is the principal restaurant variant. The country is also one of the principal honey-producing districts of Türkiye, with the famous Burdur and Bucak çam balı (pine honey) tradition.

x.The Sagalassos Late-Antique Earthquake (c. 590 CE)

A historically distinctive feature of the Burdur country is the rich record of late-antique and medieval earthquake activity: the country sits on a substantial branch of the wider Western Anatolian fault system, and the modern Sagalassos archaeological campaign has been one of the principal Mediterranean sites for the development of archaeoseismology — the study of historical earthquakes through the architectural-archaeological record. The great Sagalassos earthquake of c. 590 CE — dated by combined dendrochronological and stratigraphical evidence to the closing years of the 6th century — was the principal event that ended the city's monumental urban life, with the famous collapse of the great theatre's cavea preserved in detailed archaeological cross-section. The Sagalassos archaeoseismic record has substantially informed the modern understanding of late-antique Mediterranean seismic activity.

xi.What to See, in Order

The principal first visit in the province is to Sagalassos — fifty kilometres east of Burdur city in Ağlasun district — with the spectacular high-mountain setting, the substantial monumental restoration programme of the Hadrianic Nymphaeum and the Antonine fountain, and the great Roman theatre. The site is best visited in late spring and early autumn; the small Ağlasun Müzesi serves as the principal interpretation centre.

The second principal visit is to Salda Gölü in Yeşilova district — eighty kilometres west of Burdur city — with the spectacular Beyaz Adalar beaches and the panoramic views from the upper road. Visits should be planned for early morning or evening to avoid the substantial peak-summer crowds.

The third principal visit is to Kibyra in Gölhisar district — eighty kilometres south of Burdur city — with the great 195-metre stadium, the substantial theatre, the surviving city walls, and the small Gölhisar Müzesi.

At Burdur Merkez, the compact walking circuit covers the historic Burdur Ulu Camii of 1300; the small Taş Oda Müzesi; the substantial Burdur Müzesi with the principal regional archaeological collection (the famous Sagalassos and Kibyra finds); and the principal viewpoint over Burdur Gölü from the upper Isparta road. The Insuyu Mağarası is reached by a short drive north of the city.

The Lakes Region of southwest Anatolia — Sagalassos in its great mountain amphitheatre, Salda's turquoise water, and the long Pisidian centuries.

For the parallel Pisidian country, see Isparta (next in this set); for the Mediterranean coast immediately south, see the planned Antalya essay; for the wider Lycian frontier, see the planned Muğla essay. For more on the great Lakes Region, visit our sister site CountryOfTurkey.com.