Alanya Castle

Alanya Castle sits on a steep rock that made it hard to reach and easy to defend, and it has been in use since the Hellenistic period. It has been home to Roman, Byzantine, Seljuk and Ottoman rulers, so its walls read like a summary of Anatolian history. According to the geographer Strabo, it was the first city one saw when entering Cilicia from the west.

From the 2nd century BC its sheltered harbour and near-impregnable rock made it a pirate base, until Pompey won the Battle of Korakesion and the Romans took it. Under the Byzantines it was called Kalonoros, the Beautiful Mountain. In 1221 the Seljuk sultan Alaeddin Keykubad took the city, renamed it Alaiye and strengthened the walls. He also built the shipyard, the second Seljuk yard after Sinop, the octagonal Red Tower, the Tophane and the Inner Castle palace complex.

The Ottomans added the Süleymaniye Mosque, a bedesten, an arasta and traditional Alanya houses in the upper castle. The walls run for six and a half kilometres, with 140 towers and countless cisterns, some still in use. Look for the clover-plan Byzantine chapel and the openings once used to pour hot pitch on attackers.