Konya, Pamukkale & Inner Anatolia

Why go inland

The coast has the beaches and the marble cities. The interior has the buildings that explain how modern Turkey came to be: the Seljuk capital at Konya, the first two Ottoman capitals at İznik and Bursa, and a Roman spa town balanced on a cliff of white limestone at Pamukkale.

None of these is a full week's trip on its own. Together they make a loop that fits between Cappadocia and the Aegean, and each adds a chapter that the coast skips. If the chronology is new to you, read A Short History of Anatolia first.

Konya and the Mevlana Museum

Konya is the city of Jalaluddin Rumi, called Mevlana in Turkey. He was born in Balkh in present-day Afghanistan around 1207, arrived in Konya with his family in the 1220s, and died here on December 17, 1273. His tomb, under a fluted turquoise dome built in 1397, is the most visited building in central Anatolia.

The complex around the tomb was the mother lodge of the Mevlevi order until Turkey closed the dervish lodges in 1925. It reopened as a museum in 1926. Inside you will see the sarcophagi of Mevlana and his father, illuminated manuscripts of the Mesnevi, the cells where dervishes lived, and the kitchen where new recruits served a 1,001-day novitiate.

Entry is free. Come early, before the tour groups from Cappadocia arrive around 11 am, and give yourself an hour. Women should bring a headscarf, since the tomb chamber is treated as a place of prayer.

The sema

The whirling ceremony is a structured rite, not a dance. The dervish's tall felt hat stands for his tombstone, the black cloak for his grave, and the white robe for his shroud. When the cloaks come off, the whirling begins, right palm turned up to receive, left palm turned down to give.

The Mevlana Cultural Center on the edge of town holds a public sema on Saturday evenings for most of the year. The largest gathering is the week ending December 17, called Şeb-i Arus, the wedding night, because Mevlana described death as a reunion with God.

Seljuk Konya

Konya was the Seljuk capital from 1097, and the buildings from that century and the next are the reason to stay a second day. The Alaeddin Mosque on the citadel mound was finished in 1221 and keeps a carved wooden minbar from that date. The Karatay Madrasa of 1252 is now a tile museum, and its dome interior is one of the finest Seljuk ceramic surfaces anywhere.

The İnce Minareli Madrasa of 1264 has a stone portal so densely carved that it looks knotted. Between the two madrasas, the old bazaar streets sell etli ekmek, Konya's thin flatbread with minced lamb, which is worth a lunch stop before the drive on.

Pamukkale and Hierapolis

Pamukkale means cotton castle. Calcium-rich hot springs have been spilling over a 160 m cliff for thousands of years, depositing white travertine in shallow terraced pools. The terraces and the Roman city above them were listed by UNESCO together in 1988.

The site has one rule that surprises people: you walk the terraces barefoot, carrying your shoes, to protect the surface. The water is warm, the limestone is not slippery, and the walk up from the lower gate takes about 25 minutes.

Hierapolis was founded as a spa town in the second century BC and rebuilt several times after earthquakes, including a large one under Nero in AD 60. The theater, restored in the 2010s, is the best-preserved building. Walk the colonnaded main street to the Frontinus Gate, then out to the necropolis, where more than 1,200 tombs line the road because the sick who came here often did not leave.

The Antique Pool lets you swim over fallen marble columns in 36°C spring water for a separate fee. The small museum in the Roman baths holds sarcophagi and a fine set of statues from the theater's stage building. Arrive after 3 pm for softer light and thinner crowds, and stay the night in Pamukkale village rather than in Denizli.

Bursa, the first Ottoman city

The Ottomans took Bursa from the Byzantines in 1326 and made it their capital in 1335. The buildings from the next century show the dynasty finding its style before it reached Istanbul. Bursa and the nearby village of Cumalıkızık joined the UNESCO list in 2014.

Start at the Green Complex in the Yeşil district. The Green Mosque was begun for Çelebi Mehmed in 1419, and the Green Tomb opposite, finished in 1424, is covered inside and out with turquoise tiles from İznik. Then walk down to the Grand Mosque, built between 1396 and 1400, with 20 domes on 12 piers and a fountain in the middle of the prayer hall.

The Muradiye complex on the western side of town holds 12 tombs of early Ottoman princes and sultanas in a quiet garden.

Bursa is also where İskender kebab was invented in 1867, thin-sliced lamb over bread with tomato sauce and browned butter, still served by the founder's descendants near the covered market. There is more on that in the guide to Turkish cuisine. Bursa's other specialty is kestane şekeri, candied chestnut, sold in the same shops as Turkish delight.

İznik, tiles and church councils

İznik was Nicaea, the city where bishops assembled in 325 to settle the Nicene Creed and again in 787 to end the first iconoclast period. It later served as the Byzantine capital-in-exile after the Fourth Crusade took Constantinople in 1204, and it became the first Ottoman capital in 1331.

The Roman and Byzantine walls, about 5 km around with four gates, still enclose the town. Inside, the Hagia Sophia of İznik, a modest cousin of the one in Istanbul, is the church that hosted the 787 council, and the Green Mosque of 1378 to 1391 has a minaret sheathed in glazed brick.

The tile workshops that supplied Bursa, the mosques of Istanbul and Topkapı Palace in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries stood along the lakeshore. Several potteries have revived the craft using the old quartz-rich clay, and this is the one place to buy tiles made the historical way. İznik is 80 km from Bursa and makes an easy half-day trip.

Van and Akdamar

Lake Van is the largest lake in Turkey, at 1,640 m above sea level and saltier than any sea. On a small island near its southern shore stands the Church of the Holy Cross, built between 915 and 921 for the Armenian king Gagik I of Vaspurakan.

The outside walls carry the church's fame: carved reliefs of David and Goliath, Jonah and the whale, vines, animals and the king holding a model of his church. It was restored in 2007 and reopened as a museum. Boats leave from a jetty 45 km southwest of Van city whenever a dozen passengers gather.

Van itself has the Urartian fortress rock, where kings ruled from the ninth century BC, and a museum with the best Urartian bronzes in the country. Try Van breakfast in the old town, a spread of herbed cheese, honey, clotted cream and kavut that has become a national brand.

Planning the loop

Konya sits 230 km from Göreme on a good road, so it fits after Cappadocia. From Konya, the old Seljuk road south reaches Alanya and the Lycian coast in a day.

Pamukkale is another 410 km west and pairs with Ephesus the next day. Bursa and İznik work best as a two-day loop from Istanbul by ferry to Mudanya.

Van is the outlier, more than 1,000 km east, and needs a flight. Give it two nights if you go. For all five places, April to June and September to October bring mild days, and Konya can be very cold from December through February.

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