Alanya until a little over ten years ago, Alanya was just another sleepy coastal town with no more than handful of flyblown hotels to its name. The days its one of the Mediterranean coast’s major resorts , a booming and popular place which has expanded along its sandy beaches. Careful manegament has ensured that the town renains relatively unscathed by the tourism development , but nonetheless Alanya relies heavily on the often fragile support of its foreign vistors.

Most visitors enter the town from the west an approach that reveals Alanya at its best , the road passing through verdant banana plantations on the outskirts and sudenly revealing a rock promontory , topped by a castle rearing out of the Mediterranean. Little is known about Alanya’s early history although its thought that the town was founded by Greek colonists , who named it Kalonoros or “beautiful mountain”.

Back down at sea level , apart from the hotels and restaurants , modern Alanya has very little to offer. On the western side of the promontory , The Alanya Museum is filled with local archeological and ethnological ephemera , including find from and photos of several small Pamphylian sites in the region. Most unusual is an inscription in Phoenician sixth century BC, a sort of halfway house between cuneiform writing and the alphabet as the Greeks developed it.

Alanya’s beaches are extensive , stretching from the town centre for a good 3km west and 8km east . The sand is not the finest and little effort is made to keep the beaches clean , so its well worth heading out of town 23km on the Side road to Incekum (fine sand) a three-kilometre strech backed by pine forests which does live up to its name , even though it has been voraciously gobbled up by big hotel complexes in the last few years.

Behind the wooded coastal strip villa developments have sprung-up on agricultural land. Golf  aside facilities and shopping are very poor in the immediate area at present the area is a property hot-spot with over 35 new developments. Despite rapidly rising prices not all properties represent value for Money , so it is important to hop around and compare.