Turkey: the ancient city of Ephesus, pulling in a staggering 3.5 million visitors annually - while lovely and varied locations, ancient Kolophon, Klaros and Notion receive only a handful of visitors

Choose to visit Ephesus, or to a lesser extent the spectacular acropolis of Pergamon, and you know that you are in for the usual tourist rigmarole -- entry points lined with tacky souvenir stalls and their importuning proprietors, heavy-duty entrance fees (TL 20 for both Ephesus and Pergamon) and coach loads of visitors being frog-marched through the site at high-speed by often disinterested-looking guides.

Of course, you have to visit these places -- they are incredibly popular with good reason -- but for a complete contrast, why not try to reach some of the off the beaten track sites, where you can sit on the time-worn stone seats of a Roman era theater in complete solitude or stumble across the tumbled remnants of an ancient Greek temple with only seagulls and tortoises for company? A trio of such sites, sharing the same valley and with a linked history stretching back over 3,000 years, lie a mere half-hour drive north of Selçuk (gateway town for Ephesus) or the busy resort/cruise ship port of Kuşadası. Despite their lovely and varied locations, ancient Kolophon, Klaros and Notion receive only a handful of visitors. What’s more, all of them are, for the moment at least, free.

For more: The ancient sites of Kolophon, Klaros and Notion