The Düden waterfall is in the Kepez district of Antalya. It appears in some sources as the İskender or the Upper Düden waterfall, and locally it is known as Düdenbaşı.
Its water takes a long underground route. Two rivers rise from large karst springs at Pınarbaşı, join after a short run and disappear into the Bıyıklı sinkhole. The water travels some fourteen kilometres underground, surfaces at one end of the Varsak depression, sinks again at the other, and after about two more kilometres below ground comes out at Düdenbaşı.
Because of that, the falls do not depend on rain: even on days when nothing flows on the surface, at least ten cubic metres a second emerge from beneath the waterfall. The maximum is ninety-four cubic metres a second and the average fifteen to sixteen.
What falls from above at Düdenbaşı is water returning from the Kepez hydroelectric plant. Below the falls the Düden stream splits into two main canals at the Koyunlar regulator and runs on for nine kilometres, until it drops over a travertine lip some forty metres high east of Antalya straight into the Mediterranean — the Lower Düden waterfall.
Getting there
- Access
- City buses reach the falls.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Antalya as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 10.1 °C in January to 28.6 °C in July; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in April, May, October and November; rainfall is heaviest in December (251 mm) and lightest in August (4 mm). Long-term means for 1930-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
