Alanya Tersanesi

Standing near the Red Tower, inside the castle walls that run down to the sea, the Alanya Shipyard is the first shipyard the Anatolian Seljuks built on the Mediterranean coast. Sultan Alaeddin Keykubad I started its construction six years after taking the city. Sources give the year of construction as either 1227 or 1228; according to Wikipedia the building was completed within a year. The sultan had already founded the Sinop shipyard on the Black Sea, and when Alanya opened the Mediterranean to him too he took the title "sultan of the two seas", as the sources relate. Today it is presented as the only Seljuk shipyard in Anatolia to survive intact. The building consists of five vaulted bays opening onto the sea. By the municipality's measurements each bay is 7.70 metres wide; the longest bay is 43 metres and the shortest 32. The sea front is about 57 metres long, and its depth is given as between 40 and 44 metres depending on the source. The bays are separated by walls pierced with pointed arches. The walls are of cut stone, while the arches and vaults are of brick. Openings in the vaults let light in and drew out the smoke from the workshops. The building was sited to make the most of daylight and built on different levels to cut as little rock as possible. The sea does not enter the bays completely; their landward ends are partly gravel and partly rock. At the landward end of the third bay there is a freshwater well. A storeroom carved into the rock next to the shipyard is lit through a hole in its ceiling. The shipyard is entered from the old harbour to the northwest through a narrow, round-arched door. About four metres above the door is a five-line relief inscription praising Alaeddin Keykubad as sultan of the land and of the two seas. In the first line of the inscription the sultan's emblem can be seen between two rosettes. The projecting room to the right of the door is a small masjid, and the five-windowed room to the left was the office of the shipyard officials. As the municipality describes it, this was not just a place where ships were built or sheltered for the winter. It worked as a permanent shipyard with repair work, sail and rigging work, ironworking shops, administrative rooms and storage. Being part of a complex protected by two towers inside the walls gave it a safe base against pirates and enemy fleets. Piri Reis's Kitab-ı Bahriye, written in the early sixteenth century, describes the town, the shipyard and the harbour. After the Seljuks the shipyard kept working under the Karamanids and the Beys of Alaiye, and ships were also built here in the Ottoman period. Boat building and repair continued in the shipyard until the 1960s. The building was extensively restored between 1945 and 1950 and again in 2002, and it was registered as an immovable cultural property requiring protection in 1999. Today it can be visited as a museum of seafaring and shipbuilding. From the entrance a wooden walkway runs through the bays. The first bay holds a crane from antiquity, and the second the unplanked frame of a fast sailing boat of the type the Ottoman navy used for supply, together with a mast and a yard. The third bay shows a main mast, shipbuilding tools and the freshwater well, the fourth ancient anchors and the fifth instruments used for navigation. Right next to the shipyard stands the Tophane, thought to have been built to protect it. According to a publication of the Antalya Governorship it is a rectangular building measuring 14 by 12 metres, and it too dates from the reign of Alaeddin Keykubad. Check Alanya Municipality's website for current opening hours and admission fees. It can be seen on the same visit as the Red Tower; to see the five-arched front as a whole, the best view is from the sea. The bays are cool and half dark, and the floor is rock and gravel in places, so wear shoes that do not slip.