Things to do in Konya

Culture · Karatay (city centre)

Rumi's tomb beneath a fluted turquoise-tiled dome, inside the former lodge of the Mevlevi order — sarcophagi under embroidered cloths, illuminated manuscripts, and a constant quiet stream of visitors who are there to pray rather than to look.

Local tip: Go early on a weekday and treat it as a working shrine, because that is what it is: modest dress, head covering for women, and no photographs of people at prayer. The rose garden outside is where to sit afterwards.

Landmark · Selçuklu / Karatay

The artificial mound at the centre of the city, topped by the twelfth-century Alâeddin Mosque with its forest of reused Roman columns, ringed by the Karatay and İnce Minareli medreses and their Seljuk stone carving.

Local tip: The İnce Minareli Medrese's carved portal is the single best piece of Seljuk stonework in Türkiye and takes ten minutes to see. Walk the hill in the evening when the city comes out; the tram circles the base of it.

Landmark · Çumra, ~50 km south-east

A nine-thousand-year-old Neolithic town of mudbrick houses entered through the roof, with no streets at all — one of the earliest urban settlements anywhere, excavated under shelters on the open plain.

Local tip: Read something about it before you go, because what survives is subtle and the site rewards knowing what you are looking at. Combine it with the drive across the ova, which is the fastest way to understand what this province actually is.

Neighborhood · Selçuklu, ~8 km north-west

A stone village in a small gorge on the city's edge, Greek-speaking until the 1924 population exchange, with the Byzantine church of Aya Elenia still standing and rock-cut chapels in the cliffs above.

Local tip: Come for breakfast rather than lunch and walk up the streambed past the rock chapels afterwards. It is fifteen minutes from the centre by bus and almost nobody from outside Konya knows it exists.

Food · Around Mevlâna Caddesi, Karatay

Long wood-fired ovens turning out metre-long flatbreads of minced lamb, sold by the length and cut across the counter, in places that have done nothing else for generations.

Local tip: Order by the metre for a group and ask for it 'kıtır' — crisp. Then go somewhere else for fırın kebabı at lunch, because the two are different meals and no single place does both properly.

Nature · Meram, west of the centre

The old vineyard and orchard quarter climbing toward the hills, with poplars, water channels, tea gardens under the trees and a genuine drop in temperature — the city's traditional escape.

Local tip: This is where Konya goes on a summer evening. Take the bus out to Meram and walk up through the gardens; the tea houses along the stream are the point, and they are open long after dark.