Tarihi Alanya Seljuk Shipyard

A year after Kızılkule, in 1227, the same sultan had a five-bayed shipyard built on the shore. It is fifty-seven metres long and forty deep, its bays divided by walls with pointed arches. Türkiye's official culture portal describes it as the only Seljuk shipyard to have survived intact. Passing by on a boat, the vaults stay dark inside and the sea runs up into the mouths of the bays.

The shipyard's entrance faces the old harbour to the north-west. Some four metres above the door, a five-line inscription praises Sultan Alâeddin Keykubad as sultan of the land and of the two seas. For a state that had come down to the coast from the heart of Anatolia, this building was its turn towards the sea, written in stone.

Each of the five bays is covered by a vault. The sea does not run all the way into every bay; their landward ends are partly pebble and partly rock. The projecting room to the right of the entrance was a small mosque, and frescoes of Zülfikar, the forked sword, were found on two of its walls: a prayer room right next to the place where ships were hauled up.

The shipyard stayed in use until the 1960s. Today it is open as the Ship and Maritime Museum, standing on the same shore as Kızılkule, a short walk away.

Our city tour spends half an hour at Kızılkule and the shipyard. Tickets are not part of the tour price; if you want to go in, you buy one at the door. If you would rather see it from the water, the pirate boat trip passes right in front of it as soon as it leaves the harbour.

• 1227
• 5 bays, 57 x 40 m
• Only intact Seljuk shipyard