Here is a long post about
Alacati, one of the Turkish Aegean's nicest vacation spots. I'd been promoising myself to publish this one for about... five months. Only now could I get around to doing it.
On first sight, Alacati resembles a cross between The French Riviera and a Greek island that has rammed itself into the Anatolian mainland. This resemblance is no surprise, since, like most of the nicer places along the Turkish Aegean, Alacati was a populous Greek town before the
population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923. Unlike most of the other Greek settlements in Turkey, however, Alacati's beautiful architecture was preserved until today. Here, you can see the town square, with busts of Kemal Atatürk and Ismet Inönü proclaiming Alacatı's strongly secular, republican character.
The beautifully preserved neo-classic buildings and cobblestone alleys branch out from the main square, leading to an endless series of restaurants, hostels, shops and guest houses.
Here is an old door, probably untouched for eighty years or more...
...and here is a beautifully restored new one. Such respectful preservation of old structures is sadly very, very rare in Turkey. (But they are working on it!)
A chip on one of the houses' walls shows an antique layer of blue, overlaid with purple and at least four coats of lime white in the last few decades...
...while the paint is cracking on this nicely aged house, now used as a motel.
Yet another nice example of Alacati's architecture...
...and another, newer one, now in use as a ridiculously overpriced hotel.
Not all Alacati houses are hotels. This one, called "Ayse's Locker," is a designer boutique.
Such dress shops, jewelry and bauble stores are all over the place in Alacati! I frankly find some of them quite daft and vapid...
...but thousands of customers every summer, like these nice ladies, would probably disagree.
Despite all the beauty, Alacati
does have some weird, "Blade Runner" kinds of senselessly-built houses that characterize most of Turkey.
At least there are only a handful of such eyesores. This one, at the entrance of the town, is one of the nastiest.
Houses like this always remind me of the cult PC-Adventure
Neverhood. These few years, they are thankfully being knocked down and replaced by retro-neoclassical versions.
Moreover, newer old houses are are continually entering the local property market, available to refurbish and restore to your heart's content. With more local properties available than ever before to foreigners, why not give Alacati a look too, dear (affluent) readers?
Let's take a brief boat ride through the dreamy, postcard-like vistas of... the Bosphorus!
While the rest of the City is infected with crowds and decay, the Bosphorus is the one place where none of this shows. Buildings, groves, palaces and gardens still retain their Ottoman grandeur.
This gigantic, palace like building is the Kuleli Military Academy, the Turkish equivalent of West Point. The first buildings of this huge complex were built in the early 1800s, to train cavalry officers.
The seaside is full of more palaces and villas than one can count. I sadly don't know much about this particular, elegant one.
The famous "sunset fires" set the bosphorus ablaze in dazzling series of window reflections every afternoon. Urban legend has it that clueless immigrants, upon seeing the myriad flashes, would alert the local fire brigade, thinking that the houses were actually burning!
Yet another amazing house that I'll probably never get to own...
...and another! The houses along the straits are among the most expensive properties in Turkey.
Out of all the houses of the Bosphorus, this is perhaps the most famous. It might not look like much, but the famous Amcazade Huseyin Pasha mansion dates back to 1699, when Ottoman power was at its zenith. It is the only surviving building that reflects the architectural style of its times, and efforts are underway to rescue it, as you can see from the newly-erected scaffolding around it.
