Three days in Konya: Rumi is buried here, and he still runs the town
Two nights in the old Seljuk capital, with the tomb under the turquoise tower, two medieval seminaries at the foot of one hill, a dervish ceremony and the best roast lamb in Anatolia.
- Length
- 3 days, 2 nights
- Where you stay
- Konya
- Places
- 8 across 3 days
Konya sits in the middle of a wheat plain with nothing on the horizon in any direction, which is a strange setting for one of the most visited places in Turkey. People come for a grave. Rumi, the Persian poet and mystic who wrote in Konya in the 13th century and is known here as Mevlana, the master, is buried under a fluted turquoise tower on the east side of town, and several million people a year come to stand in front of it.
The city was the capital of the Sultanate of Rum, the Seljuk state that held central Anatolia after the Byzantines lost it, and the buildings that survive from those two hundred years are the other reason to come. They are stone rather than tile on the outside, with enormous carved portals, and the interiors are lined in blue and black faience that predates anything Ottoman by a century and a half.
It is also, by some distance, a more conservative city than Istanbul or Izmir, and it feels it. Most restaurants do not serve alcohol, the shrine is full of people praying rather than photographing, and nobody minds either way. Two nights is the right length: the sights are compact, and the sema is worth arranging your dates around.
Highlights
- Rumi's tomb under its fluted turquoise tower, in a courtyard of dervish cells that has been a place of pilgrimage since 1273
- The sema, the turning ceremony, performed on Saturday evenings and nightly in the week before 17 December
- A blue tiled dome inside a seminary of 1251, and a stone portal next door with a minaret that lightning cut in half
- Fırın kebabı and etli ekmek, which Konya does better than anywhere and does not do quietly
- Sille, an Orthodox Greek village ten minutes out of town, without a Greek in it since the 1920s
Where to stay
Konya, two nights
The shape of the city is simple. A low mound in the middle, artificial and very old, carries the Seljuk palace ruins and the sultans' mosque; the great seminaries stand around its foot; and one long avenue runs east from it to the shrine, with the bazaar streets on either side.
Almost every sight in Konya sits inside that half hour of walking. Only Sille, an old village up a valley to the northwest, needs any transport at all.
Konya is a city of well over two million people and most of it is new, wide and unremarkable. Ignore the drive in from the airport, as with Bursa. The old quarter has not moved in eight hundred years.
Day by day
Day 1 in Konya
Rumi's tomb, the brick mosque and the sema
Go straight to the shrine, ideally in the morning before the coaches from Cappadocia arrive. It is a working pilgrimage site, and watching what people do there is as much the point as the objects in the cases.
Walk back west along the avenue afterwards. Halfway along is the oldest working mosque in the centre, a brick Seljuk building from the years before the great stone portals came into fashion, and it takes ten minutes to look at properly.
Keep the evening for the sema if this is a Saturday, or if you have hit the December week when it runs daily. If not, eat early and long instead, and come back for it another night of the trip.
- 09:15
Mevlana Museum
CultureRumi died in Konya in 1273 and was buried beside his father; the fluted turquoise tower over the grave went up soon after and the dervish lodge grew around it. The Mevlevi orders were closed down by the republic in 1925 and the complex reopened as a museum, which is what it is called and not at all how it is used. Expect queues, socks rather than shoes, headscarves for women, and a room of illuminated Qurans and dervish robes off the courtyard.
- 13:00
Iplikçi Mosque
ReligiousBuilt in 1202, which makes it the oldest thing still in use in the centre, and it is brick rather than the carved stone of everything that came after. It burned and was rebuilt in the 16th century, spent fifteen years as a museum from 1945, and went back to being a mosque in 1960. Rumi is said to have taught in the seminary that stood next door.
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- 19:00
Sema
VisitThe turning ceremony, done seriously and free, at the cultural centre a few minutes east of the shrine. Saturday evenings all year, starting an hour earlier in the winter half of the calendar than the summer one, and twice daily in the week before 17 December. Get there half an hour early for a seat, keep the camera down once it starts, and stay to the end.
With more time: The bazaar streets north of the avenue, between the shrine and the hill, are where the city does its ordinary shopping: felt, sheepskin, copper, and stalls of dried apricots and pistachios. Half an hour in them is a better use of a late afternoon than another monument.
Day 2 in Konya
Alaaddin Hill and the two seminaries below it
The whole of this day happens within two hundred metres. The hill in the middle of the city is a mound built up over several thousand years of settlement, landscaped into a park with tea gardens under the trees, and the Seljuk sultans put their mosque and their tombs on top of it.
At the foot of the hill stand two seminaries built within fifteen years of each other in the middle of the 13th century, both now small museums, and between them they hold as fine a pair of Seljuk interiors as Turkey has.
That leaves the afternoon open, which in Konya is best spent slowly. Eat the roast lamb at lunch rather than dinner, because the ovens sell out.
- 09:30
Alaaddin Hill
NatureThe mound in the middle of the city, occupied since prehistory and now a wooded park with a tram loop around it. On top are the sultans' mosque, a plain wide hall of the 1220s built with columns robbed from Roman ruins, and the domed tomb beside it where several of the Seljuk rulers of Rum are buried. The fenced excavation on the north side is what is left of their palace.
- 11:30
Karatay Medresesi Museum
VisitA seminary of 1251, now a museum of Seljuk tiles, and the reason to go in is the dome. It is lined with blue, black and white faience in a pattern of interlocking stars, with a pool below it that once held the reflection, and it is the finest interior of its period anywhere in Anatolia. Small, quiet, and worth twice as long as it takes to walk round.
- 13:00
Fırın kebabı for lunch
EatThe lamb ovens are a short walk from the hill and they work to a simple rule: it goes in early, it comes out at midday, and when it is gone it is gone. Order by weight, half a kilo between two, and eat it with the bread and the raw onion they bring.
- 15:00
Ince Minare Museum
CultureBuilt in 1265 as a seminary and named for its slender minaret, which was much taller until a lightning strike in 1901 brought it down through the roof. The rebuilt stump looks wrong and everyone says so. The carved stone portal is the thing here, deep bands of Arabic script knotted over the doorway, and inside is a museum of Seljuk carving, including the winged figures and double headed eagles from the city walls.
With more time: If the tilework has caught you, the smaller Seljuk tombs scattered through the old quarter are worth an hour of wandering. Otherwise the park on the mound is where Konya spends its late afternoons, and in summer it is where the shade is.
Day 3 in Konya
The Çatalhöyük finds, and the old Greek village at Sille
Start with the archaeology museum, which is five minutes from the hill and holds what came out of the ground on this plain: Roman sarcophagi carved with the labours of Hercules, and finds from the neolithic mound an hour southeast that is among the oldest settlements anybody has dug up.
Then go out to Sille, a stone village in a small gorge northwest of the city, Greek Orthodox until the population exchange emptied it in 1924. The houses have been restored, the church at the bottom is open, and there are chapels cut into the rock above the stream.
It is twenty minutes back into town for the train or the airport bus, so an afternoon departure is comfortable and a morning one is not.
- 09:15
Archaeology Museum
VisitA small museum, largely undisturbed by visitors, with three Roman sarcophagi carved in high relief as its centrepiece and a room of material from Çatalhöyük, the neolithic settlement southeast of the city. Half an hour does it, and it puts the Seljuk buildings you have been looking at into a very long local sequence.
- 11:00
Sille
OtherA village of stone houses in a narrow valley about ten kilometres out, reached by dolmuş, tram and a short walk, or a cheap taxi. Its church is dedicated to St Helena and the tradition here dates it to the fourth century, though what stands is much later. Cave chapels are cut into the cliffs above, the stream is bridged half a dozen times, and the cafés along it are pleasant for an hour.
- 15:00
Train or plane out
TravelThe fast trains go from the YHT terminal out to the north, twenty minutes from the centre by tram. For the airport, the Havaş bus only meets the Istanbul flights, so allow for a taxi instead.
With more time: With a full third day rather than a morning, Çatalhöyük itself is about an hour southeast by car. It is a nine thousand year old settlement under two shelters, with very little to look at and a great deal to think about, and it needs a car or a tour because there is no useful bus.
Before you go
Getting there
The fast train is the way in. Five YHT services a day come from Ankara in about an hour and three quarters, and four a day from Istanbul via Eskişehir in about four and three quarter hours, which beats flying once you count the airports. Trains use the Selçuklu station on the northern tram line.
Konya airport has three flights a day from each of the two Istanbul airports, and seasonal charters from Germany. It is small and it fogs in over winter, when flights are cancelled and the trains keep running. The Havaş bus into town takes about forty minutes and meets the Istanbul flights only.
By road, Cappadocia is around three hours east and Antalya four to five hours south over the Taurus mountains, both on frequent long distance buses.
Getting around
The centre is walkable and almost everything worth seeing lies within a kilometre of Alaaddin Hill, or in a straight line down Mevlana Caddesi from the hill to the shrine, which is a quarter of an hour on foot.
Two tram lines cross at the hill: one runs north to the fast train station and the bus terminal, the other east past the cultural centre. They take no cash. Buy a KonyaKart at the railway or bus station or at the bigger tram stops and top it up at any corner shop.
Taxis are cheap and plentiful, which is the easy answer for Sille and for the airport.
Eating
Fırın kebabı is the local dish and it is a good one: lamb roasted for hours in a bread oven until it falls apart, served on flatbread with nothing else, sold by weight, and finished by lunchtime in the places that do it best.
Etli ekmek is the other one, a flatbread the length of your arm topped with minced lamb, onion and pepper and cut into strips. Order half a metre between two unless you are hungry.
Alcohol is hard to find and nobody expects to be drinking with dinner. What you get instead is very good ayran, tea in the tea gardens on the hill, and a syrupy dessert habit the city takes seriously.
The sema
The turning ceremony is a religious ritual rather than a show, and in Konya it is performed as one. The regular public sema is on Saturday evenings at the cultural centre east of the shrine, at seven in winter and eight in summer, and it is free.
In the run up to 17 December, the anniversary of Rumi's death and the week the city calls Şeb-i Arûs, the reunion night, ceremonies run as often as twice a day and the city fills. Book a hotel months out if you want to be here for it.
There is no applause, no photography during the turning, and the whole thing lasts about an hour. Dress as you would for a mosque and arrive early enough to sit.
Konya gets skipped, and the reason is usually the map: it sits between Cappadocia and the coast and looks like somewhere you drive through.
What is actually there is the capital of a state that ran Anatolia for two centuries, the best tiled interior of its age, and a grave that has been drawing people continuously since 1273. Two nights, and you will wonder why the buses do not stop.
Or make it a longer trip
These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.
Make it your trip
Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.
Common questions
- When can I see the whirling dervishes?
- Saturday evenings at the cultural centre, free, all year, and much more often in the week before 17 December, when the city marks the anniversary of Rumi's death. Some hotels and restaurants stage shorter versions for tourists on other nights; the Saturday ceremony is the real thing and costs nothing.
- Is Konya worth a stop between Cappadocia and Antalya?
- Yes, and it is exactly the right place for one. Buses run three hours from Cappadocia and four or five south over the Taurus to the coast, and the Seljuk buildings here are the ones missing from both of those trips. Two nights is enough; one night and a morning will do if you have to.
- Do I need to dress differently here?
- At the shrine and in the mosques, yes: shoulders and knees covered, a headscarf for women, shoes off. In the street Konya is more conservative than the coast and the cities, and covering up a little is the easy way to feel comfortable rather than a rule anybody will enforce.
- Can I get to Çatalhöyük without a car?
- Not easily. It is about an hour southeast, and public transport gets you to Çumra and then leaves you short. A half day tour from Konya or a taxi with a wait is the practical answer, and the museum in town holds a good deal of what was found there.
- Is two nights enough?
- For the shrine, the Seljuk buildings, a sema and Sille, yes. Add a night if you want Çatalhöyük as well, or if you are here in the December week, when the ceremonies and the crowds are worth several days on their own.