Red Tower (Kızıl Kule)

About this place

An architect from Aleppo built it, and that one fact changes how you look at the Red Tower before you climb a single step. In 1226 the Seljuk sultan Alaeddin Keykubad brought in a master builder from Aleppo, Abu Ali Reha al-Kattani, to raise an octagonal tower at the tip of Alanya's harbour, cut stone below and red brick above: 33 metres high, five storeys, with a single job, to guard the shipyard built against the rock beside it. So what you get is Syrian taste in a Turkish town, brick rising over the stone, and twenty-two openings near the top through which boiling pitch and water once went down on anyone who came too close. It remains one of the best-preserved Seljuk military buildings in Anatolia, and its silhouette is the emblem on the municipal flag. Inside is plainer than the outside promises, and that should be said plainly. The lower floors hold a small ethnographic display of carpets, old weapons and household objects from Alanya's past, browsed in minutes. What the ticket really buys is the staircase and the roof. The stairs are stone, narrow and steep, and there is no lift, so the tower does not suit pushchairs or anyone who struggles with a climb, though a five-year-old can manage it slowly. On top you stand between the battlements with the harbour and its excursion boats laid out in front, the castle walls climbing the mountain behind, and directly below you the five vaulted bays of the Seljuk shipyard. A protected walkway runs from the tower along the seaward wall to the shipyard in a few minutes; the shipyard has its own ticket, sometimes sold combined with the tower's, so ask at the booth. Timing makes the difference. The thick walls keep the interior cool even in August, but the roof is fully exposed and a midday summer climb is needlessly punishing; an hour before closing is the moment, when the light softens and the queue thins. In winter it stays open, nearly empty, and closes earlier. Climb or not, the tower is Alanya's evening backdrop: floodlit after dusk, the starting point of the harbour promenade and the place the boat trips leave from. Twenty to forty-five minutes is enough, and they are minutes worth paying for.