Kiz Kalesi (Maiden's Castle)

Kiz Kalesi (Maiden's Castle) Review

On an island just off the coast is the Kiz Kalesi. The island is known to have been a settlement as early as the 4th century BC, though the castle is nowhere near that old. Several offshore castles in Turkey bear the same name, which comes with a legend of a king, a princess, and a snake: the beautiful princess, apple of her father's eye, had her fortune read by a wandering soothsayer who declared she would die of a snakebite. The king therefore sent her to a castle on a snake-free island. Destiny, however, can never be avoided, and the offending serpent was accidently delivered in a basket of grapes sent as a gift from her father's palace. More prosaicly, the castle was an important part of the row of defenses along the coast that were built and rebuilt over the centuries to stop invaders from Syria entering Anatolia via the coast route to Antalya. What you see is mostly 11th-century Byzantine rebuilding to keep out the Crusaders based in Antioch. Boatmen will offer to take you out, but hiring a paddle boat is the most popular way to explore.