Turkey is one of my favorite countries to visit, as there is an abundance of historical sites. My bucket list for Turkey seems to be ever-growing, but here are some of the places I’ve visited in the Central Anatolia region. Here are posts for the Mediterranean and the Marmara & Aegean regions.

Konya: the city served as the capital of the Sultanate of Rum from 1097 until 1308. During this time, Konya’s most famous resident, Rumi, established the Mevlevi Order. Today you can visit the Mevlâna Museum, once the lodge for the tariqa, it was turned into museum by Ataturk in 1926. You can also visit the Shams Tabrizi Tomb & Mosque, the resting place for the Rumi’s spiritual teacher.

There are many beautiful mosques in Konya today, here are the ones I was able to visit:

• Aziziye Mosque: constructed in the 1800s in the baroque style
• Selimiye Mosque: constructed in the 1500s
• Kapu Mosque: constructed in the 1600s (maybe my personal fave!)
• Alâeddin Mosque: I was told it is the oldest building in Konya and dates back to early Seljuk times!

You can also visit the Karatay Madrasa. Founded in the 1200s, it has been restored and has served as a museum since the 1950s

Sille: “Sille is located 8 km northwest of Konya city center. Sille [was a] significant settlement of the early Christians and was on the Byzantine-Jerusalem route. During both Seljuk and Ottoman periods, people from different ethnic (Turkish and Greek) and religious (Christian and Muslim) origins lived together.” The Aya Elenia Church was founded by Saint Helen, the mother of Constantine. It was renovated in the 19th century, hence the rococo style. Sille was once known for its art and the fact that it was one of the few places were Cappadocian Greek was still spoken but, “in the Turkish Republic period, the majority of the non-Muslim population was displaced to Greece due to the Treaty of Lausanne. The population of 18,000 decreased to a few thousand and many of the traditional houses, public buildings and street fabric disappeared.” (From an article by Ebru Erdogan and S. Erkis at Selcuk University) Today Sille is being renovated and is a popular place to go for breakfast for residents of Konya.

Çatalhöyük: In his lecture series Cities of the Ancient World, Professor Steven Tuck states, “why did people create the settlement of Çatalhöyük and why did they construct it with no streets, no public buildings, no common civic spaces? The motivation was… not defense, agriculture, or the rise of the great man. Instead, it seems to be religion and the need for people to build, maintain, and stay in proximity to their shrines. The earliest traces of settlement date to 9400 BCE. At its height, just after 6000 BCE, it was occupied by as many as 8,000 people.” Göbekli Tepe, dating to 9500 BCE and known as the first temple in the world, is located 435 miles away. In his lecture series the Roots of Religion, Professor John R. Hale states, “excavations began at Çatalhöyük in 1958. They found a fantastic, Pueblo-like community. The whole thing was like an enormous hive. None of the rooms had doors, as they were instead entered through the ceiling. Most of the rooms were shrines or places of religious worship. Plaster was spread over the walls and pigments had been worked up from charcoal and other substances and used to paint extraordinary scenes on the walls. There were giant vultures with outspread wings, decapitated human bodies in front of them. There were scenes that showed a giant bull and humans seeming to taunt it. There now is a sense of opposition between humans and nature that we don’t see in older, Paleolithic cave paintings. Venus figures reappear at Çatalhöyük (the oldest known is the Venus of Hohle Fels, from 41,00 years ago).” This Haaretz article detailing the disease and violence evidenced by the bones of those buried under the platforms of the homes of Çatalhöyük explains, “the death knell wasn’t disease or violence: It was that the putative Garden of Eden became less than fruitful. The people in the late period had to walk much further than the predecessors… it seems they could no longer grow grain close to home, which suggests they had overexploited the environment. The town’s population collapsed.”

Cappadocia: In his Great Tours series on Turkey, John Hale states, “Cappadocia, or ‘land of horses’ features some of the most extraordinary geological landscapes in the world. Millions of years ago three big volcanoes erupted and spewed ash and lava over this landscape and the original limestone were covered by up to 300 feet of ash, which gradually compacted down to a volcanic stone called tuff. Basalt then spread out over the surface of his soft, compacted ash. Rain froze and expanded in the basalt and at last, the underlying tuff was exposed. Cones, pillars, and standing masses with part of the basalt cap on top were created—the famous fairy chimneys. In the 7th or 8th century BCE, a tradition began in Cappadocia of living as troglodytes or cave dwellers. The tuff was so easy to dig it could be excavated with a sharpened stick. Homes were built by burrowing into the side of cliffs.”