Walk barefoot up the white travertine terraces

A hillside of blinding white mineral terraces built up by hot springs over thousands of years, with the Roman city of Hierapolis on top of it. Shoes are not permitted on the travertine.

Calcium-rich water emerges at around 35°C and deposits calcium carbonate as it cools and flows, building basins that overspill into one another. Pamukkale means cotton castle. The barefoot rule exists because footwear scratches and discolours the surface, and the site was badly damaged by hotels built directly on it before UNESCO listing forced them off.

Hierapolis above was founded in the second century BC as a spa city and grew around the springs. Its theatre is exceptionally well preserved, and the necropolis is one of the largest in Anatolia — a great many people came here to be cured and were buried instead.

Cleopatra’s Pool sits at the top, a warm spring pool with fallen marble columns lying on the bottom from an earthquake. Swimming among them is separately ticketed.