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Message: <blockquote data-quote="El Mahdi" data-source="post: 4446688" data-attributes="member: 59506">Another place I visited that feels very D&D is a castle in Turkey known locally as "Castle by the Sea".  There are actually two castles at the site, a castle on the shore with the aforementioned name, and a castle on an island about 300-500 yards offshore from the shore castle.  The castle on the island is known as KizKalesi, or "the Maidens Castle" after a legend of a Kings daughter kept there so she wouldn't be killed by a snake bite that was foreseen.  However, the daughter was killed anyways, by a snake accidentally brought to the island in a basket of food. The site was originally Roman and even has the ruins of a breakwater or causeway leading out to the island.  It was later Byzantine, and even served as a crusader castle for a time.  It's located on the Mediteranean coast, just south of Adana. The castle on the shore is located on a small hill, with the southern walls of the castle, and the famous sea gate, abutting directly up to the waters of the mediteranean.  Unlike most European castles and sites, the site really hasn't been cleaned up and has very little oversight.  For a couple of bucks you can walk through the chain link gate and straight into the past, untouched or restored, just as it has probably looked for the last 900 years.  Walking through it and around the massive fallen blocks, it's so easy to imagine the dungeons beneath the your feet (in the hill) and see the ships that may have docked in the natural harbor and been protected by the castles. The area to the north of the castle (on the other side of the road) has scattered tombs, shrines and even the still standing ruins of an aquaduct.  I've even thought of using this locale in a FR campaign, with the aquaduct as ancient Chessentan ruins and the castles ruined Turmish strongholds. When you stand in the ruins and look out the huge ancient gate to the west (you could easily drive a bus through it, but because of the ruined state of the castle, now stands about 20 to 30 feet above the beach), all you have to do is hold up a hand to block the sight of the beach resort nearby, and you are instantly transported back a thousand years.  Seriously cool.<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool    :cool:"  data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" /></blockquote>

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