Daily Konya & Beysehir Tour from Konya – Mevlana Museum & Eflatun Pinari

Konya and Lake Beysehir Day Tour – Rumi's Museum, a Wooden Mosque and a Hittite Spring

Our daily Konya tour to the Mevlana Museum and Lake Beysehir is a full guided day tour that pairs the city's most famous sight with the lakeside landscapes and history of the Beysehir district. Starting from Konya with hotel pickup and lunch included, this daily excursion covers Sufi heritage, Ottoman and Seljuk-era architecture and a Hittite sacred spring in a single day.

• Mevlana Museum, the mausoleum of Rumi and former lodge of the Whirling Dervishes
• Matbah, Tilavet Chamber and Sema-Hane within the museum
• Selimiye Mosque, an Ottoman mosque right beside the museum
• Lunch in a traditional local restaurant
• Lake Beysehir, a national park dotted with 32 islets
• Esrefoglu Mosque, a remarkable wooden mosque built in 1299
• Eflatun Pinari, a Hittite spring sanctuary from the 13th century BC

The Mevlana Museum in central Konya holds the tomb of Jalaluddin Rumi, the Sufi mystic known in Turkey as Mevlana, and was once the lodge of the Mevlevi order. Its rooms include the Matbah kitchen, the tombs, the Tilavet Chamber for Quran recitation and the Sema-Hane, the hall of the whirling ceremony. Next door, the Selimiye Mosque was begun in 1558 for the future Sultan Selim II and completed in 1567 in classic Ottoman style.

In the afternoon this Konya day trip heads west to Lake Beysehir, one of the largest freshwater lakes in Turkey, whose level changes with the seasons. It is a national park, supplies water for irrigation and is an important habitat for many bird species. In the town of Beysehir, the Esrefoglu Mosque combines carved wood, stone, brick, tiles and paintwork, and its timber interior has survived more than seven centuries in striking condition. The last stop, Eflatun Pinari or the Violet Spring, is a walled pool fronted by a monumental Hittite relief of winged sun discs held up by hybrid figures. It is an easy, rewarding daily tour from Konya.