Eastern Heritage

عن المكان

Nine days in the southeast. Gaziantep mosaics, Sanliurfa pilgrim city, Mardin on its limestone ridge. Where the country runs deepest. The southeast is where fewer foreign visitors go, and where Türkiye's history runs the deepest. Sanliurfa claims to be the birthplace of Abraham, Gobekli Tepe pushes the start of organised human civilisation back to 9,500 BC, and Mardin sits on a limestone ridge above the Mesopotamian plain looking unchanged for a thousand years. The food is the other half of the trip. Gaziantep is arguably the best food city in the country and was the first Turkish city in UNESCO's creative cities of gastronomy network. The pace is slow on purpose, the days are warm, the evenings are long. Gaziantep → Şanlıurfa → Mardin, 9 days, 8 nights: Gaziantep (2 nights), Şanlıurfa (2), Mardin (3), then back to Gaziantep for the last night. Fly into Gaziantep and pick up a rental car there; Harran is a detour on the way from Şanlıurfa to Mardin. To skip the long drive back, fly out of Mardin instead. Airports: Gaziantep (GZT), about 20 km from the centre; Şanlıurfa GAP (GNY), about 35 km out; Mardin Prof. Dr. Aziz Sancar (MQM), about 20 km from the old town. Driving times are estimates from OpenStreetMap routing; bus times are the average scheduled journeys listed by Turkish bus-ticket sites, with frequent daily departures on all three city pairs. Last checked October 2026.

معلومات سريعة

المدينة

كايسيري

العنوان

كايسيري، تركيا