Mediterranean · Hatay Province
Alexander's port on the deep bay, named for him in Greek and again in Turkish — a city of palms, ships, and the long shadow of the Amanos Mountains.
İskenderun sits at the head of the deep bay that bears its name, on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean where the coast bends sharply south toward Antakya and the Syrian frontier. Behind the city the Amanos Mountains — a long, sharp range that the ancients called the Mons Amanus — rise in a single dark wall, shutting off the city from the inland plain. The result is a strip of warm coast that has felt, for as long as it has been written about, like a place set apart: maritime, polyglot, agricultural, and almost always a frontier.
The setting is what most older travel writing fixes on first: palms along the seafront, fishing boats in the harbour, café tables among them. That coast remains, even after the earthquakes. The port is one of Türkiye's two largest container hubs — its two terminals together handling more than a million standard containers a year — and the shipping that comes and goes is a constant of the city's modern character. The Adana–Antakya highway runs through, and freight carriers stop here on the way to Iraq and the Gulf.
Inland from the coast, the broad Plain of Issus opens northward toward Dörtyol — a gentle agricultural country of citrus groves that supplies a great share of the country's oranges, tangerines, and lemons. Drive that road in February when the trees are in bloom and the air is heavy with the same scent that Alexander's soldiers, two and a half thousand years ago, are said to have remarked on.
A maritime, polyglot, agricultural city on a strip of warm coast that has, for as long as it has been written about, felt like a place set apart.
The classical story is that the city was founded in the autumn of 333 BCE, in the immediate aftermath of Alexander the Great's victory over the Persian king Darius III at the nearby Plain of Issus. The battle itself was fought near the mouth of the Pinaros stream, at the modern town of Dörtyol, a few kilometres up the coast — a narrow place between the sea and the mountains where the wider Persian army could not deploy its numbers and Alexander's smaller, better-organised force prevailed. Darius fled east; his wife, mother, and daughters were captured in the Persian camp and treated, by the standards of the period, with notable respect.
Whether Alexander personally founded the new port called Alexandria ad Issum ("Alexandria at Issus") is now thought less certain than later legend made it; modern scholarship judges it more likely the work of one of his immediate successors, founded as a memorial to his victory. Either way, the site mattered. It commanded the only good natural harbour at the head of the bay, and it sat at the southern end of the great pass through the Amanus called the Syrian Gates — the road every army marching south from Anatolia toward the Levant has used, for almost three thousand years.
The Greek name softened over the centuries to Iskenderon, then to the Italian and French Alessandretta and Alexandrette, and finally to the modern Turkish İskenderun. All four are the same word: Alexander's little city.
The Ottomans took the city in the fifteenth century and held it until the partition that followed the First World War. Between 1921 and 1938 İskenderun lay inside the French mandate of Syria as the chief town of the autonomous Sandjak of Alexandretta. After a contested referendum in 1939, the surrounding region voted to join the Republic of Türkiye as the new province of Hatay — a decision Syria has never formally recognised but one that has stood now for nearly nine decades. The city's deep bilingualism (Turkish and Arabic, with smaller Armenian and Greek-speaking communities historically), its mixed Sunni–Alawite–Christian fabric, and the unmistakable Levantine grain in its food and architecture all date to that long shared history with the wider region.
Twenty kilometres up the coast from İskenderun, in the small town of Payas (the older spelling Yakacık is still seen on some maps), stands the most important Ottoman monument in the province: the Sokollu Mehmet Pasha Külliyesi, a complete sixteenth-century complex commissioned by Sultan Selim II and built privately by his Grand Vizier, Sokollu Mehmet Pasha, after the conquest of Cyprus in 1571. The architect was Mimar Sinan, the supreme Ottoman builder, and the inscription gives the date of completion as 1574.
Payas was a strategic node on the pilgrimage road to Mecca and on the trade road south. The complex was built to provide for both. Spread across roughly 15,000 square metres, it is not a single building but an organised small city: a mosque and a madrasa; a primary school for children and a soup kitchen (imaret) for travellers; a great caravanserai arranged around a square colonnaded courtyard; separate hammams for men and women; guest rooms (tabhane) for visiting officials; and an arasta — a covered bazaar with forty-five shops running through the centre. The whole ensemble, in stone and brick, is one of Sinan's most complete surviving provincial commissions: an entire urban argument made of buildings.
Featured · Sokollu Mehmet Pasha Külliyesi · Payas, 1574
In the days after 6 February 2023, with much of Payas's modern housing destroyed, the complex remained largely intact — built, like the rest of Sinan's mature work, to a structural standard the modern town around it never matched. The minaret of its Sarı Selim Mosque was partially damaged; the rest stood. According to Anadolu Ajansı, around 2,500 displaced people a day were housed in the caravanserai and the imaret in the months after the earthquake, returning to a building made for travellers in 1574 because it was, in the moment, the safest building they had.
The municipality has since completed restoration work, and as of 2024 the complex has reopened fully to visitors. Sinan's reputation has always rested partly on the durability of what he built; to see a 450-year-old complex of his still functioning, in a province where dozens of more recent buildings did not, is part of what gives Payas its weight as a place to visit.
Several places within an easy radius of İskenderun reward a half-day or full day's drive. Together they sketch the geography that has always given this city its character: the high ground behind, the long beaches south and west, the agricultural plain north toward the historic battlefield.
35 km south-west · ~45 min
The bay's principal beach town. Long stretches of soft Mediterranean sand, clear shallow water, family-friendly small hotels and guesthouses. Quieter and less developed than Antalya — closer in spirit to a Turkish village holiday than to an international resort.
17 km south · 25 min, then climb
A hill-station plateau in the pine forests of the Amanos, traditionally an İskenderun summer escape from the coastal humidity. Picnic tables under the trees, distant views down to the bay. Quiet; modest köy lokantası village restaurants. Best in late spring and autumn.
35 km north · 40 min
The agricultural town at the centre of the citrus plain. The Battle of Issus was fought in the narrows along the Pinaros stream nearby; there is no battlefield park, but the geography that made the battle possible — the squeeze between sea and mountain — is unmistakable when you stand in it.
45 km north-west, on the Adana road
A black-basalt fortress on a low volcanic hill, originally Byzantine but enlarged and held by the Crusaders of the County of Edessa in the twelfth century. The town below was hit hard in 2023 (19 buildings destroyed); the castle on its hilltop remains visitable, with broad views over the Çukurova.
İskenderun's table is one of the most distinctive on the Turkish Mediterranean — a Levantine kitchen that draws as much from Aleppo and Antakya as from Anatolia proper. The single dish for which the city is famous is künefe: a hot dessert of shredded pastry layered with unsalted cheese, soaked in light syrup, baked until the underside is dark gold, and served immediately so the cheese is still pulling thread. There are künefe shops in every Turkish city now, but the local view is firm — that the proper version comes from this coast.
Beyond it: very fresh seafood, especially the small Mediterranean prawns in olive oil and garlic; oruk (local kibbeh, with bulgur and spiced meat); the humus tradition that runs through Hatay and into Syria, eaten with thin lavash; muhammara (red pepper and walnut paste); and the country bread baked daily in the village ovens of the Amanos foothills. The food is unhurried, well-seasoned, and noticeably Mediterranean — closer to Beirut than to Bursa. For recipes, see TurkishCooking.com.
Planning an actual trip? Our sister site ILoveTurkey.com has the practical guide — getting there, where to stay (post-quake updates), and how İskenderun fits into a Hatay or Eastern Mediterranean itinerary.
İskenderun is a working city, not a tourist town, and that is part of its appeal. Hatay Airport (HTY), 65 km south near Antakya, is the usual arrival point — though check current operating status, since the airport itself was damaged in 2023 and the wider regional aviation pattern is still recovering. Adana Airport (ADA) to the north is the larger and more reliable alternative; the drive south to İskenderun is comfortable on the O-52 motorway. The city has long-distance bus links to all of southern Türkiye.
Spring (April–May) and autumn (October–early November). Summer is hot and humid on the coast; winter is mild and rainy. The citrus blossom in February is one of the great sensory pleasures of the Turkish year.
Two to three days is enough for the city, the Sinan complex at Payas, an afternoon at Arsuz, and a half-day at Toprakkale and Dörtyol. Add a day if continuing to Antakya.
The post-2023 hotel landscape is still in flux. Confirm current opening status before booking. Arsuz, less affected by the earthquake, may be a more comfortable base for some visitors than the central city. (Booking-card placeholder — production site links partner hotels.)
Antakya (ancient Antioch) is 60 km south — once one of the great cities of the Roman world, also heavily damaged in 2023, with the famous mosaic museum among the wonders that survived. Together İskenderun + Antakya make a serious Hatay itinerary.