In the shadow of Alanya’s Kızıl Kule (Red Tower) the mellow voice of African American singer Ntjam Rosie lingers on the night air.
Actually, I’m astounded by the change that has come over Alanya. Of course, like all mega-resorts, it still has its dreary stretch of shops designed to sell only those items it’s believed that a tourist can’t live without, and of course there are still too many seafront hotels that look as if they could do with a designer to wave a magic wand over their dreary facades. But things have come on by leaps and bounds here. Why, there are even two new boutique hotels in the fast-gentrifying Tophane district behind the tower and that’s certainly not something I was anticipating.
The Selçuk past
To get back to basics then. For all its ultra-modern initial appearance, Alanya is actually a town with a long history, most evidently as the second city of the Selçuks who built a summer palace high on the plug of rock overlooking it. This is still the best place to start your explorations since it’s from here that you’ll be able to work out the lay of the land. Whether you’ll actually want to pay the entry fee to go into the castle is a another matter since there’s little to see inside it bar the rather pretty remains of a Byzantine church thought to date back to the 11th century.
The road up to the castle is extremely steep so the best thing to do is to ride up here by the bus that leaves conveniently from near the museum, then walk back down at your leisure, admiring the views, stopping off at the small cafes (the Sarnıç with a cistern in its grounds is especially pleasant) and running the gauntlet of souvenir sellers especially around the side turn left that leads into the pretty little enclave of Ehdemek where old houses cluster around a mosque dating back to 1231 but rebuilt during the reign of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent (1530-60).
Just behind the mosque is one of Alanya’s newest and best developments: a small Kültür Evi (Cultural House) arranged to show off what the interiors of local houses once looked like. Its most striking features are the upstairs fireplaces with large wooden hoods and the downstairs storeroom ringed with colorful sacks. Here, too, you’ll find a woman working a loom to produce woven silk. Once upon a time the dapper men of Alanya strode around town wearing cummerbunds striped in orange, green and cream. The new versions are nice enough, although they can’t hope to match up to the quality of the museum-piece originals on the walls.
As you walk downhill from Ehdemek, you’ll pass the remains of another small Byzantine chapel as well as some fine carvings especially over gates in the old city walls. Halfway down the hill a turn off to the right is signed for the Tophane Mahallesi (neighborhood). If you take this turn (which rapidly disintegrates into a cobbled path), you’ll eventually emerge in the old Ottoman quarter behind the Kızıl Kule, which is now one of the most interesting parts of town.
The Kızıl Kule itself was built in 1226 by Alaeddin Keykubad (1220-37) at the point where the walls of his castle came down to the sea. Recently restored, it now houses a small children’s museum of fairly limited interest. However, this is now connected by a boardwalk behind the walls to the old Selçuk Tersanesi (Shipyard), built by the sultan in 1227 as a supplement to the northern shipyard in Sinop, thus winning him the title “Sultan of the Two Seas”. As you approach the entrance, you see a small mosque to the right and a room that was probably used by the workmen to the left. Over the gate itself is the sultan’s coat of arms.
None of this prepares you for the beauty of the interior of the building, which is divided into five separate arched bays into which the sea ebbs and flows. Each bay has been kitted out with artifacts to do with the building’s history, including the hull of a double-masted skovela, a vessel that looked the same at prow and stern, and was mainly used to transport commercial goods.
From the Tersane the boardwalk continues onto the old Tophane (Arsenal), after which you can keep going to the bastion at the far southern tip of the peninsula. Here it’s possible to climb up onto the old Selçuk walls or to wander around amid the ruins of many shattered, unidentifiable ruins. Alternatively, if that’s not your scene, you can turn back towards the town center, pausing to admire some of the fine old houses with their high stone bases and elaborate wooden balconies that are rapidly being brought back to life again.
Out and about
For the time being, Alanya’s museum is closed for restoration but near it you can visit the town’s other major attraction, the Damlataş Mağarası, a small and intensely humid cave whose stalactite and stalagmite attractions pale into insignificance in comparison with those to be seen on an excursion east to the Dim Mağarası. This is a truly spectacular cave, well-lit and easy to walk through and with, as an extra treat, a small lake at the far end into which rock formations stride like pieces on a chessboard. The attraction owner’s have picked out and named a few other rock formations including a delightfully winsome pair of owls although you’re almost bound to come up with your own identifications.
The Dim Mağarası has been receiving visitors for many years, but a competing excursion is now appearing in travel agency windows and that is to the Sapadere Canyon, a little way further east and inland beyond Demirtaş. For the time being, Sapadere offers a relatively peaceful rural retreat with another boardwalk wending its way above a river running through a dramatic gorge to a pretty waterfall.
On the way to or from the gorge you can stop off at the Cüceler Mağarası (Dwarves Cave) set deep in wooden countryside and accessed by yet another boardwalk. Compared with the Dim Mağarası, this cave will seem unspectacular; in comparison with the Damlataş Mağarası, however, it’s wonderfully peaceful and pretty.
But of course the most popular excursion out of Alanya is by boat along the coast to assorted beauty spots, including the so-called Korsanlar Mağarası (Pirates Cave). One of the strangest things about tourism is the way that it can turn even the most awful aspects of the past into the fun attractions of today. In the last two centuries BC, Alanya was beset by Cilician pirates who made everybody’s life hell until finally the exasperated Romans put paid to their activities in 67 BC. Now a fleet of colorful wooden sailing ships decked out with pirate insignia sets sail from Alanya harbor every morning bearing a cargo of eager tourists in search of a chance to swim, sightsee, and generally laze the day away with a fish lunch thrown in.
WHERE TO STAY
Centauera Hotel. Tel: 0242-510 0016
Hotel Kaptan. Tel: 0242-513 4900
Temiz Otel. Tel: 0242-513 1016
Villa Turka. Tel: 0530-547 4641
HOW TO GET THERE
The nearest airports to Alanya are west in Antalya and east in Gazipaşa. Regularbuses ply the east coast of the Mediterranean linking Alanya to Antalya and Side
(Today’s Zaman)
