The Perge stadium is one of the largest in Asia Minor with a length of 234 metres and a width of 54 metres. In the arena mainly athletic games, wrestling and boxing fights, but also bloody gladiator fights took place. The ancient stadium with a capacity of 15,000 to 20,000 visitors is located between the theatre and the city. As it was built on the plain, the builders needed a suitable supporting structure for the rows of seats due to the lack of a natural elevation.
The 17 well preserved rows of seats in the stadium rest on a total of 50 open vaults. Every third vault was designed as an entrance. The vaults sloping to the rear were largely used as shop premises to supply the spectators. They were connected to each other by passageways. The justified question as to where the visitors to the stadium and certainly also the visitors to the nearby theater were allowed to carry out their emergency work could not be answered conclusively by archaeologists to this day. In the vaults - in contrast to today partly - demonstrably not.

Traces of settlement of the early Chalcolithic (4th millennium BC) on Table Mountain form the oldest evidence. The place named in a Hittite state treaty of about 1235 BC Parḫa can be equated with Perge. This suggests a Late Bronze Age settlement, the remains of which have since been discovered and published in 2010.
For the Hittite period there are so far only few archaeological evidence, as well as for the Greek immigration which allegedly took place after the Trojan War according to the local tradition. For example, two participants in the Trojan War are named as founding heroes - the seers Kalchas and Mopsos.
In the 7th century B.C. the development to a Greek-influenced settlement began under Rhodian influence, after Perge obviously cultivated close contact with Cyprus in the 10th-8th century B.C.. As a leading city, Perge belonged to the Attic-Dellic Sea Alliance. The city surrendered to Alexander the Great, then under Seleucid and Ptolemaic rule,
after the Peace of Apameia from 188 to 133 B.C. under Pergamenian rule; then Roman. Perge became capital of the province Lycia et Pamphylia in 73/74 AD.