Daily Konya City Tour from Karaman – Mevlana Museum & Karatay Madrasa

Konya Day Trip from Karaman – Rumi, Seljuk Art and Ancient Treasures

This daily Konya city tour from Karaman is a guided day tour to the spiritual capital of Anatolia, about an hour and a half away by road. With pickup from your hotel in Karaman, the daily excursion brings together the Mevlana Museum, the Karatay Madrasa, the Alaeddin Mosque and the Konya Archaeological Museum in one comfortable day.

• Mevlana Museum, the former lodge of the Whirling Dervishes and resting place of Rumi
• Matbah, tombs, Tilavet Chamber and Sema-Hane inside the museum complex
• Karatay Madrasa, a Seljuk theological school of 1251, now the Tiles Museum
• Alaeddin Mosque, a 13th-century mosque with 42 columns and a wooden ceiling
• Konya Archaeological Museum, spanning Bronze Age settlements through to Byzantine times

Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi was a 13th-century Sufi mystic and poet whose verses on love and tolerance are read in dozens of languages, and the United Nations named 2007 the Year of Rumi. His former dervish lodge, the tekke of the Mevlevi order, is now the Mevlana Museum. Walking through its sections, you see the Matbah where novices were trained in the kitchen, the tombs beneath the famous green dome, the Tilavet Chamber used for Quran recitation and the Sema-Hane, the hall where the whirling ceremony was performed.

The Karatay Madrasa was built by the Seljuk Turks in 1251 as a school of Islamic learning; today its turquoise and cobalt tilework and the ceramics excavated in Konya make it one of the finest small museums in Turkey. The Alaeddin Mosque stands out from later Ottoman mosques with its forest of 42 columns beneath a flat wooden roof. After free time for lunch, the Konya Archaeological Museum presents inscriptions, mosaics and carved sarcophagi. Please note that the Karatay Museum and the Archaeological Museum are closed on Mondays. This Konya day trip is a relaxed, fully guided daily tour for anyone staying in Karaman.