Konya

The province

Get to know Konya

Konya, ancient Iconium, was the capital of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum in the 12th and 13th centuries and is one of Turkey’s largest cities, on the southern Anatolian plateau. The city is associated with the poet and mystic Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi, who lived and died there in the 13th century.

The Mevlana Museum, under the green dome, houses Rumi’s tomb and objects of the Mevlevi order and receives pilgrims from across Turkey. The sema ceremony, the whirling dance of the dervishes, is UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage and can be seen at the Mevlana Cultural Center, with more performances in December, on the days leading up to 17 December, the date of Rumi’s death. On Alaeddin Hill are the Seljuk Alaeddin Mosque, the Karatay madrasa with its tile museum, and the İnce Minareli madrasa with a stone and wood museum.

About 50 km away, Çatalhöyük is a Neolithic settlement over 9,000 years old, a World Heritage Site, with houses built against one another and entered through the roof. Sille, near the city, preserves stone houses and the church of Saint Helena. In Beyşehir, the 13th-century Eşrefoğlu Mosque, with wooden columns and roof, is a World Heritage Site as part of Anatolia’s medieval wooden mosques and sits beside Turkey’s largest freshwater lake.

At the table, etli ekmek, a thin, long flatbread topped with minced meat, and fırın kebabı are the city’s dishes. Kilistra, in Gökyurt, has houses and a church carved into the rock.