Kızıl Kule

Rising on the edge of Alanya harbour, the octagonal Kızıl Kule, the Red Tower, is the symbol of the city and one of the best preserved examples of thirteenth-century Mediterranean defensive architecture. The Anatolian Seljuk Sultan Alaeddin Keykubad I had it built to protect the harbour, the shipyard and Alanya Castle from attacks by sea. According to the building inscription quoted by the municipality, the tower was completed in April 1226. The master builder was Ebu Ali Reha el-Kettani of Aleppo, whose name can be read in the builder's inscription to the right of the entrance. The tower sits directly on bedrock on sloping ground. For this reason it reaches 33 metres on its eastern face, while the western face is about three metres lower. Its diameter at ground level is 29 metres, and each of its eight faces is about 12.5 metres wide. In the lower body, carefully cut rectangular limestone blocks are interspersed with column shafts taken from ancient buildings. The upper parts are built of red brick, and the tower takes its name from their colour. The tower's defensive layout is easy to read from outside. Its faces carry a total of 56 arrow slits, 22 openings arranged for pouring boiling pitch and water on attackers, and 6 spouts that throw rainwater clear of the walls. On the north face, about 10 metres above the ground, is a four-line building inscription in the name of Alaeddin Keykubad. A second inscription on the south face praises the sultan in lavish terms. The easiest way to see the inscriptions is to look at the tower from the harbour and the shore road. Behind the plain exterior hides a surprisingly complex interior. The tower has five levels, the ground floor, the first floor, a mezzanine, an open floor and an open terrace, and each has a different plan. You enter through a deliberately small and unadorned door and a narrow corridor. On the ground floor a vaulted corridor wraps around the central octagonal pier. According to the researcher İbrahim Hakkı Konyalı, these corridors once held low wooden rooms where the guards slept and rested, of which only traces remain today. A stone staircase with high steps leads to the first floor. A large water cistern was set into the top of the central pier, and according to the municipality it still works today. In the floor of the corridor near the cistern, ventilation shafts open at the midpoint of each side of the octagon. A door in the northwest of this floor leads out to the outer walls, and on the wall to the right a large ship graffito can be seen. On the mezzanine, a narrow corridor, you see the inner side of the pitch and water openings up close. On the open terrace at the top, the mouth of the cistern sits in the middle, surrounded by 16 ventilation shafts in double rows, and light entering through them reaches down to the first floor. The tower does not stand alone but is part of the whole castle. The walls of Alanya Castle start at the Red Tower, circle the peninsula, pass in front of the Tophane and the Shipyard and close again here. Evliya Çelebi, who saw the city in the seventeenth century, wrote that the eight-cornered tower on the sea side of the castle held two thousand people during a siege and that a castle warden with forty soldiers lived there. The building was restored in 1951-1953, and in 1979 an ethnography museum opened on its entrance floor. The museum displays carpets and kilims, clothing, kitchen utensils, weapons, scales and lighting tools, a loom and a Yörük tent that tell the story of life in Alanya and among the nomadic Yörük of the Taurus. The tower also hosts painting exhibitions and classical music concerts from time to time. The Red Tower also appeared on the reverse of the 250,000 lira banknote that circulated from 1992 to 2005. The building appears on the heritage site list of Alanya Municipality's Directorate of Enterprises and Affiliates; check the municipality's website for current opening hours and admission fees. Because the tower stands right next to the harbour in the city centre, it is easy to reach by city public transport or on foot along the shore. The stairs are high and steep, so wear comfortable shoes and allow for the heat of the terrace at midday in summer. After the tower you can move along the walls to the Shipyard right next to it, and towards sunset watch the tower's bricks turn red from the harbour.