Antalya Saat Kulesi

The Antalya Clock Tower rises on top of an old bastion of the city walls at Kalekapısı, the main landward gate of Kaleiçi. The modern centre of the city and its historic core meet at exactly this point; almost everyone stepping off a tram or bus enters Kaleiçi at the foot of this tower. According to the inventory of the Antalya Metropolitan Municipality, the structure sits on the bastion of Kale Kapısı. That gate was mentioned by İbn Bibi in connection with the sieges of 1207 and 1216, was also known as Pazar Kapısı, Çarşı Kapısı and Asitane Kapısı, and was called Varoş Kapısı by Evliya Çelebi. The gate itself had been demolished by the years of the First World War; today the bastion and the tower on it are what remains. The wall system carrying the bastion has a building history of two thousand years going back to the 2nd century BC; it was repaired against Arab raids in the Byzantine period, and inner walls were added when the city passed under Seljuk rule in 1207. More than sixty towers are known to have stood on the walls; most were pulled down before the 1920s, and the demolition of the rest was completed in the mid 1930s. The Kaleiçi page of the Antalya Governorship lists Hıdırlık Tower, Hadrian's Gate and the Clock Tower as the surviving pieces of the city walls; this bastion is therefore one of the last visible links of a vanished defensive system. The date of construction varies between sources, and the contradiction has to be reported as it is. The Antalya Metropolitan Municipality writes that the tower was built in 1921 by the Antalya Municipality on the initiative of people who had migrated from İzmir after the occupation of that city. A DHA report on the 2022 restoration led by the Antalya Governorship, and the Turkish Wikipedia article, tie the tower instead to 1901, the 25th anniversary of the accession of Abdülhamid II. In that account the German Emperor Wilhelm sent clocks to Ottoman cities as gifts for the anniversary, and the Antalya clock was one of them. The twenty year gap between the two dates has not yet been resolved in a single source; we are content to place the tower at the beginning of the 20th century, somewhere between the last years of the Ottoman state and the first years of the Republic. The architecture is plain and legible. The lower body is a square bastion of rubble and dressed stone; above it sits a slimmer storey of neatly cut stone, and above that the clock storey. According to the Turkish Wikipedia article the tower is 14 metres high from the ground and 8 metres measured from the top of the walls. Each of the four facades carries a round clock dial, and at the very top there is a bell. The municipal inventory records that the tower was covered by a dome until 1942, and that the four sided rows of five crenellations were made later. The tower was repaired in 1930 and 1967, the latter because of a collapse in the lower section. The dials and the mechanism were renewed over time; an electronic clock was installed in the 1970s. The restoration that began in 2022 under the Antalya Governorship added an unexpected page to the tower's story. The work revealed that the original mechanism had disappeared years earlier and that a plastic clock had been fitted in its place; the only original piece the authorities could find was the bell. A photograph from 1930 in the Antalya Museum archive showed that the numerals on the first dial were in Ottoman script. The same photographs confirmed that the tower originally had a dome; the later crenellations were removed and a new lead covered dome was built to the restoration project. The team planned to install a mechanism made with the techniques of the period, together with a dial bearing Ottoman numerals, in place of the lost one. Seeing the tower takes no special effort; standing in Kalekapısı square and looking up is enough. The best photographic angle is from the southeast, which also takes in the domes of the Tekeli Mehmet Paşa Mosque rising directly behind the tower. That mosque was built between 1606 and 1617 by Tekeli Mehmet Paşa; its large central dome is supported by two half domes each on the east and west, and together with the tower it forms the skyline of the entrance to Kaleiçi. Early in the morning the square is quiet and the stone texture of the tower shows better in side light. When the evening lighting comes on, the dials can be made out from a distance. The streets entering Kaleiçi from the foot of the tower lead down to the Yivli Minaret, the Karatay Medrese and the marina. Kalekapısı is also the main interchange of the city centre; it is easy to reach by tram and bus lines. The tower cannot be entered; it is a monument of the square and can be seen from outside at any hour. Before walking on into Kaleiçi, pause for a minute and look at the dials; the city has been reading its time from this tower for more than a century.