*½ stars.

Turkey's worst entry into the world heritage list by miles (I think Xanthos gets a bad rep and should be a collection of sites anyway), it's not even easy to visit. The location is in the suburbs of Malatya and we are talking farm community, with odd roads and not even a proper parking lot. So I stopped at what had a "no parking" sign anyway just in front of the site. A 100m walk to the entrance and you are greeted by a guard. There are opening hours on a small sign but it seems one can only enter with a custodian, and they take turns. Maybe this isn't the case in high season but it makes sense because one enters a digsite and touching/damaging the walls is done easily. I had to wait for a couple of people to come out first and then the guard let me in. There are excellent displays as you make your way into the digsite, in Turkish, English and ITALIAN?!

There are layers of history here, the building isn't really recognizable as a palace, and all findings are taken to the nearby Malatya museum so you should make time for both. Just seeing the site is rubbish, but my rating is for the site alone. The remaining bits are shards of pottery and some sort of plumbing, and the highlight was clearly the "motif" as he said, the wall paintings. Usually they are roped off but he let me in for a close look to take some pics, but I suggest your camera has proper zoom to fetch these images. Cheap camera pics won't do.

As I was saying the opening hours are a little strange but should be fine in high season. Just one more story to tell about this though: as I was leaving the guard wanted to lock the metal gate and a group of 12 Turkish tourists with kids was arriving, and he told them it's closed. As they were pointing at me leaving he said "UNESCO'da çalışıyor" which... I'll let you figure out yourself. Not sure I want to be proud of that lol. I just think he couldn't be f***** to deal with that group and have a quiet moment ;)