Lyrbe (Seleukia) is equipped with the best preserved agora (market place) of Asia Minor. The city lies, difficult to access and spared from modern settlement, about 23 km north of Side in the middle of a dense pine forest. Recent research suggests that the ruins are a town called Lyrbe and not as long suspected, Seleukia in Pamphylia.

Although Lyrbe is known by name from several geographical works of antiquity, the history of the city lies largely in the dark. Its name refers to a seleukidic foundation, possibly directly to Seleucos I. Nikator. It will have been founded around 300 BC. The site was explored in the early 1970s by Istanbul archaeologists, who secured an Orpheus mosaic and a bronze statue of Apollo - now in the Antalya Museum - as the city's most valuable finds in art history.

The city experienced its heyday in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD and was probably abandoned in the 7th century AD.

The Stoa in front of the market building

To get to Lyrbe (Seleukia), do not drive into the centre of Manavgat at the artificial waterfall, but turn left coming from Side.
Follow brown signs | Şelale 4 / Seleukele 13 | Follow this road. It passes the small and large waterfall (Şelale). Shortly after Manavgat you can see an old Roman bridge on the left side and the remains of an aqueduct about 2 km further on. This aqueduct supplied the old Side with drinking water from the Taurus Mountains.

A few kilometres after the large waterfall, a signposted road leads left to Lyrbe (Seleukia). After about 1 km you reach the village Bucakşeyhler. In the village keep right, at the mosque also right. The formerly unpaved road to the ruins, which was hardly passable after rainfall, is now paved to the parking lot below the city gate. The town is situated on a now forested hill, protected from three sides by steeply sloping slopes.

One enters the actual city area through the southern gate on the only side that had to be massively protected by a city wall.