Cities Visited by Apostle Paul in Asia Minor

Why Apostle Paul Is the Most Connected Christian Figure to Turkey

Of all the New Testament figures, no one shaped Christianity in Asia Minor more decisively than Paul. The Apostle Peter visited briefly. The Apostle John lived his last decades in Ephesus and is buried there, but his ministry in the region was relatively short. Paul, by contrast, spent most of his missionary career in what is now Turkey. He was born here, in Tarsus on the southern Mediterranean coast. He was sent out from Antakya, the ancient Antioch on the Orontes, on every one of his three missionary journeys. He lived for three years in Ephesus — the longest single ministry of his career. He wrote substantial portions of the New Testament while in this country or about communities in this country.
This concentration of Pauline activity in modern Turkey is not always understood by visitors arriving with a Jerusalem-centred biblical map in mind. Half of the New Testament was written either in or about cities I can drive to from my home in Kuşadası in a single day. The Letters to the Galatians, to the Ephesians, to the Colossians, both letters to Timothy, the letter to Philemon, and the First Letter to the Corinthians (which Paul wrote during his time at Ephesus) all have their primary geographical setting in modern Turkey. The article below introduces the principal cities Paul visited on Turkish soil; the additions in red provide context, biblical references, and historical details that complete the picture.

Even though Paul started his life as a Jewish-born man of Tarsus and turned into a Christian hunter in his adulthood, he was confronted by Jesus, and then he became an apostle of Jesus. The cities visited by the Apostle Paul in Asia Minor were Tarsus, Antioch in Pisidia, Alexandria Troas, Ephesus, Lystra, Miletus, Derbe, and Iconium. These critical locations played an important role in the spread of Christianity in Anatolia.

Tarsus was the birthplace of the Apostle Paul and naturally was his initial destination in Asia Minor. Apostle Paul had three long missionary journeys during his lifetime. Paul visited several cities around Asia Minor and some of them are mentioned in the Holy Bible. Let’s look at the cities visited by Apostle Paul in Asia Minor.

Tarsus

Tarsus City became the capital of the Cilicia province of the Roman Empire after Pompey conquered the city in 67 BC, Pompey. According to Acts of Apostles, Saint Paul was born here as Saul. Paul loved his city, and we can clearly see this in Acts 21:39 as he says “I am a Jew of Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no insignificant city; and I beg you, allow me to speak to the people”.

Tarsus was not merely Paul’s birthplace. It was one of the three great university cities of the ancient Mediterranean alongside Athens and Alexandria, with a substantial school of philosophy particularly known for Stoicism. The young Paul — Saul, before his conversion — would have grown up immersed in this intellectual environment, which helps explain the unusual breadth of his later cultural references in cities ranging from Athens (where he quoted Greek poets to the Areopagus in Acts 17:28) to Rome itself. Beyond the city’s intellectual prestige, Tarsus sat at the southern entry of the Cilician Gates — the narrow mountain pass through the Taurus Mountains that connected the Mediterranean coast to the Anatolian highlands. Anyone travelling between Antakya and the Anatolian interior used this route, and Paul used it multiple times in his missionary career. What survives at Tarsus today includes the so-called Cleopatra’s Gate, the partial Roman streets near St. Paul’s Well, and the substantial archaeological park around the ancient cardo maximus.

Antioch in Pisidia

The city is located on the crossroad of several ancient and modern routes in Asia Minor between the Mediterranean, Aegean, and Central Anatolian provinces. Paul arrived here after crossing the Taurus Mountains. Today Antioch in Pisidia is called Yalvaç of Isparta city of Turkey. Paul the Apostle and Barnabas visited Antioch in Pisidia on their first missionary journey. Paul gave a speech in cities synagogue. His message was well-received, and many people, both Jews and Gentiles, became believers. However, Paul’s success angered some of the locals, who provoked opposition against him and his followers, leading to his expulsion from the city. After leaving some early Christian converts here Paul left, but he came back and visited them on his second and third journeys.

Antioch in Pisidia at the time of Paul’s visit was a Roman colony — a city populated significantly by retired Roman military veterans and their families, with a parallel Greek-speaking and Jewish population. This colonial status made it strategically important and gave Paul a Latin-influenced audience unusual among the Anatolian inland cities. The synagogue speech Paul delivered there (Acts 13:16-41) is the longest and most fully recorded of his missionary sermons in the Book of Acts. It is the first major exposition of Pauline gospel theology preserved in the New Testament. The site at Yalvaç today preserves substantial Roman remains, including the foundations of the imperial sanctuary, the via Sebaste paving stones, and the partially-excavated Christian basilica of Saint Paul, which was built on the traditional site of the synagogue where the famous sermon was delivered.

Alexandria Troas

Alexandria Troas was located in a strategic location between Asia Minor and Europe. Alexandria Troas was Apostle Paul’s sailing point while going and returning to Europe for the first time. Eutychus of Troas fell down of a window while listening to Paul and this is mentioned in Acts 20:10. Apostle Paul received a vision from God instructing him to evangelize in Macedonia. Paul followed this calling after founding a church in Alexandria Troas.

The vision Paul received at Alexandria Troas in Acts 16:9 is one of the most consequential moments in the geographical history of Christianity. Paul had been blocked by the Holy Spirit from preaching in the Roman province of Asia (Ephesus and the surrounding region) and then from entering Bithynia in the north. He had ended up at Troas without a clear next destination. The night vision he received — a man of Macedonia pleading with him to “come over into Macedonia, and help us” — turned the trajectory of the early Christian mission westward toward Greece and ultimately toward Europe. Paul sailed from Troas the next morning. The Christianisation of Greece, Italy, and eventually all of Europe traces back, in human terms, to this single night at this single harbour. The ruins of ancient Alexandria Troas are in Çanakkale Province, near the modern village of Dalyan, partly preserved as a substantial archaeological field.

Ephesus

Ephesus was the capital of the Asia Minor province of the Roman Empire. Ephesus, being one of the most crowded and important cities of the Roman Empire, played an important role in early Christianity and Apostle Paul’s missions. Paul preached in the Jewish synagogue of Ephesus and the hall of Tyrannus in Ephesus. Demetrios the silversmith started a riot to banish Paul from Ephesus and succeeded in doing so.

Paul’s residence at Ephesus during the third missionary journey was three years long — by far the longest single ministry of his entire career. Acts 19 records the basic outline: three months of preaching in the synagogue, then two years of daily teaching at the lecture hall of Tyrannus, then a final period in which the gospel spread throughout the wider Asian province. The bonfire of magical scrolls at Ephesus, recorded in Acts 19:19, was worth fifty thousand pieces of silver — an enormous sum indicating the depth of the conversion movement. Paul wrote the First Letter to the Corinthians from Ephesus during this stay (he mentions this in 1 Corinthians 16:8). His tent-making profession is described in Acts 18:3 — he worked alongside his close companions Aquila and Priscilla, who appear repeatedly in his letters. The Great Theatre where the silversmiths’ riot of Acts 19:23-41 took place is still standing at the modern Ephesus archaeological site, with the original seating banks and the acoustic properties that carried the two-hour chant of “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians” still functional.

Lystra

Lystra City is in the Konya region of modern Turkey. Apostle Paul visited Lystra with Saint Barnabas and met one of his early disciples Saint Timothy here. Apostle Paul healed a handicapped man in this city by performing a miracle. local people to believe that they were gods. However, when Paul and Barnabas attempted to explain that they were merely messengers of the true God, the people turned against them, and Paul was stoned and left for dead.

The young Christian Timothy whom Paul met at Lystra would become one of his closest associates and the principal recipient of two of his pastoral letters. Timothy’s mother Eunice and grandmother Lois are mentioned by Paul in 2 Timothy 1:5 as the women who passed on the faith to him. Timothy travelled with Paul on the second and third missionary journeys, was left in charge of the Ephesian church during Paul’s later imprisonment, and was eventually himself martyred at Ephesus during the procession of the Artemis cult several decades after Paul’s death. The stoning Paul suffered at Lystra (Acts 14:19) is one of the most physically severe incidents of his missionary career. Some scholars believe Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” mentioned in 2 Corinthians 12:7 — a chronic physical condition that troubled him through his later ministry — may have been a long-term consequence of this near-fatal Lystran stoning.

Miletus

Miletus was mentioned in Acts 20:15–38. Paul stopped in Miletus during his third missionary journey. Apostle met the elders of Ephesus Church in the great harbor of Miletus and had his final speech in Asia Minor. He also left his disciple Trophimus in Miletus since he was sick and could not go on tiring sea travel.

Paul’s farewell speech to the Ephesian elders at the harbour of Miletus, recorded in Acts 20:17-38, is the most personally moving passage in the entire Pauline corpus outside Paul’s own letters. Paul had sent for the elders of the Ephesian church to meet him at Miletus because he did not want to disembark at Ephesus and be delayed there. He told them he would not see them again. He summarised his three years of ministry among them. He warned them about coming false teachers. He committed them to God. And then they all knelt down together on the harbour shore and prayed, wept, embraced him, and accompanied him to the ship. The harbour where this scene took place is now several kilometres inland from the modern Aegean coast — the silting of the Maeander River has moved the shoreline westward over the centuries — but the location is identified and the ruins of ancient Miletus are accessible to visitors near the modern village of Balat in Aydın Province.

Derbe

Derbe town is nearby modern Turkey’s Konya city. Apostle Paul visited Derbe during two of his three missionary journeys. Apostle had once Silas and once Barnabas with him during visiting Derbe.

Derbe was the easternmost point of Paul’s first missionary journey, the turning point at which he and Barnabas began the return trip back through Lystra, Iconium, and Pisidian Antioch. Acts 14:21-22 records that they “preached the gospel to that city, and had taught many” before returning. Derbe was also the home city of Gaius, one of Paul’s later companions mentioned in Acts 20:4. The ancient site is now identified with a mound near the modern village of Aşıran (also called Kerti Höyük) in Karaman Province, southeast of Konya. The site is essentially unexcavated and modest as a visitor destination, but it carries significance for biblical pilgrims tracing the full geography of the first journey.

Iconium

Apostle Paul visited Iconium on his first and second missionary journeys. His visits were in about 47–48 with Barnabas on his first and Silas on his second journey. The preaching and ideas of Apostle Paul created a big disturbance in Iconium which resulted in the stoning of Paul and his companions. Despite the opposition, Paul and Barnabas stayed in Iconium for some time, strengthening the faith of the believers and starting a Christian community.

Iconium has a particular early Christian heritage that goes beyond the canonical New Testament. The apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla, an early Christian text dating to the second century, identifies Iconium as the home of the young noblewoman Thecla, who heard Paul preach during his visit, converted dramatically, broke off her arranged marriage, and followed Paul as a disciple — eventually facing martyrdom trials at Antioch in Pisidia and surviving multiple miraculous deliverances. The tradition of Thecla as the first female martyr of Christianity became enormously influential in late antiquity, with major pilgrimage sites at Seleucia (modern Silifke) dedicated to her cult. The story is not in the canonical Bible, but its setting at Iconium is part of the broader Christian heritage of modern Konya. The Sille area outside Konya preserves a small Byzantine church dedicated to Saint Helena, founded according to tradition during her visit to the region in the fourth century.

Antioch

Antioch city is Antakya of today’s Turkey. Antioch was one of the early centers of Christianity. Barnabas and Paul visited Antioch on their first out of three missionary journeys.

Antakya — ancient Antioch on the Orontes — was much more than a stop on Paul’s first journey. It was the operational base of his entire missionary work. He was sent out from Antioch on every one of his three missionary journeys (Acts 13:1-3, 15:36-41, and 18:23), and returned to Antioch between the first and second journeys. The Christian community of Antioch was the first to use the name “Christians” for the followers of Jesus, according to Acts 11:26 — a verbal turning point in the history of religion. The cave church of Saint Peter on Mount Staurin, by tradition where Peter, Paul, and Barnabas worshipped during their time in the city, is one of the oldest continuous places of Christian worship in the world. Note: Antakya was severely damaged in the February 2023 earthquake, and visitors should confirm current accessibility of specific sites before planning a visit. The cave church survived with limited damage and remains an essential destination for any Pauline pilgrimage in Turkey.

What Other Cities Did Apostle Paul Visit in Turkey?

The nine cities above are the principal stops in Paul’s Asia Minor ministry, but they are not the complete list. Paul was a constant traveller, and the Book of Acts records a number of additional Turkish cities and ports where he landed, changed ships, preached briefly, or passed through on his way to somewhere else. Some were significant Mediterranean and Aegean harbours; others were brief but biblically attested stops. For visitors building a comprehensive Footsteps of Apostle Paul itinerary across modern Turkey, the cities below complete the geographical picture. Each entry gives the modern Turkish location and approximate driving distances from the three main arrival cities of Istanbul, Ankara, and İzmir, to help with practical trip planning.

Seleucia Pieria

Seleucia Pieria was the seaport of Antioch on the Orontes, sitting at the mouth of the Orontes River. This was the harbour from which Paul and Barnabas set sail at the very start of the first missionary journey, recorded in Acts 13:4: “they… departed unto Seleucia; and from thence they sailed to Cyprus.” It was one of the great engineered harbours of the Roman East, famous for the Titus Tunnel — a massive water-diversion channel cut through solid rock by Roman legionaries to keep the harbour from silting up. The modern site is at Samandağ in Hatay Province, near the Syrian border, and like the rest of Hatay it was affected by the February 2023 earthquake, so current site access should be checked before a visit.

Distance to Seleucia Pieria (Samandağ): about 1,130 km (700 miles) from Istanbul, 690 km (430 miles) from Ankara, and 960 km (600 miles) from İzmir (approximate driving distances).

Perga

Perga was the first city in Asia Minor that Paul reached on the first missionary journey after sailing from Cyprus, landing in the coastal region of Pamphylia. It was here that John Mark, the young companion of Paul and Barnabas, left the group and returned to Jerusalem (Acts 13:13) — a departure that later caused the sharp disagreement between Paul and Barnabas at the start of the second journey. Perga was a major city of Pamphylia with a famous sanctuary of Artemis. The site at modern Aksu, just east of Antalya, preserves one of the best ancient city layouts on the Turkish Mediterranean coast, with a monumental Hellenistic gate, a long colonnaded street, a stadium, and a theatre.

Distance to Perga (Aksu): about 700 km (435 miles) from Istanbul, 490 km (305 miles) from Ankara, and 470 km (290 miles) from İzmir (approximate driving distances).

Attalia

Attalia was the port from which Paul and Barnabas sailed back to Antioch at the end of the first missionary journey (Acts 14:25-26). Founded by King Attalus II of Pergamon in the second century BC, it was the principal harbour of Pamphylia and has been continuously inhabited ever since. Today it is Antalya, the largest city on the Turkish Mediterranean coast and the gateway for millions of modern visitors. The atmospheric old town of Kaleiçi preserves the Roman-era Hadrian’s Gate and the ancient harbour basin that Paul would have used.

Distance to Attalia (Antalya): about 680 km (425 miles) from Istanbul, 480 km (300 miles) from Ankara, and 450 km (280 miles) from İzmir (approximate driving distances).

Assos

Assos was a stop on Paul’s third journey as he travelled back toward Jerusalem. Acts 20:13-14 records an unusual personal detail: Paul chose to walk overland the roughly thirty kilometres from Alexandria Troas to Assos by himself, while his companions sailed around the headland, and then rejoined the ship at Assos. The reason for the solitary walk is not stated, but it is one of the quiet human touches in the Acts travel narrative. The ruins of ancient Assos at the modern village of Behramkale preserve a dramatic acropolis crowned by the Temple of Athena, with panoramic views across the strait to the Greek island of Lesbos.

Distance to Assos (Behramkale): about 340 km (210 miles) from Istanbul, 680 km (425 miles) from Ankara, and 250 km (155 miles) from İzmir (approximate driving distances).

Patara

Patara was the harbour where Paul changed ships during his return voyage at the end of the third missionary journey (Acts 21:1-2), boarding a vessel bound for Phoenicia. Patara was the principal port of ancient Lycia and the meeting place of the Lycian League, the ancient world’s earliest known democratic federation. The site preserves an exceptionally well-restored ancient lighthouse — among the oldest known anywhere — along with the council chamber of the Lycian League and a Roman theatre. Patara is also celebrated as the birthplace of Saint Nicholas a few centuries after Paul.

Distance to Patara (Gelemiş): about 830 km (515 miles) from Istanbul, 700 km (435 miles) from Ankara, and 440 km (275 miles) from İzmir (approximate driving distances).

Adramyttium

Adramyttium gives its name to the ship that carried Paul as a prisoner at the beginning of his voyage to Rome. Acts 27:2 records that Paul and his guards boarded “a ship of Adramyttium” — a coasting vessel registered to this Aegean port — to sail along the coast of Asia Minor. Adramyttium was a significant trading harbour at the head of the gulf that still bears its name. The modern town is Edremit in Balıkesir Province, at the centre of one of Turkey’s most productive olive-oil regions on the northern Aegean coast.

Distance to Adramyttium (Edremit): about 360 km (225 miles) from Istanbul, 620 km (385 miles) from Ankara, and 160 km (100 miles) from İzmir (approximate driving distances).

Myra

Myra was the Lycian harbour the Adramyttian ship reached on the voyage to Rome, and where the Roman centurion transferred the prisoners to an Alexandrian grain ship bound for Italy (Acts 27:5-6). Myra was a leading city of the Lycian League. Three centuries after Paul, it became the see of Saint Nicholas, the historical bishop behind the figure of Father Christmas; his tomb and the Byzantine church built over it still stand at the site in modern Demre. The rock-cut Lycian tombs and the large Roman theatre at Myra are among the most striking ancient remains on the Mediterranean coast.

Distance to Myra (Demre): about 840 km (520 miles) from Istanbul, 640 km (400 miles) from Ankara, and 480 km (300 miles) from İzmir (approximate driving distances).

Knidos or Cnidus

Cnidus appears in the account of Paul’s voyage to Rome. Acts 27:7 records that the ship “had sailed slowly many days, and scarce were come over against Cnidus” before contrary winds forced it to turn south toward Crete. Cnidus was a wealthy Dorian Greek city at the very tip of a long peninsula, famous in antiquity for the Aphrodite of Cnidus, the first major nude female sculpture of the Greek world, carved by Praxiteles. The ruins are at the tip of the Datça peninsula in Muğla Province, with two ancient harbours still clearly visible.

Distance to Cnidus (Datça): about 800 km (500 miles) from Istanbul, 770 km (480 miles) from Ankara, and 290 km (180 miles) from İzmir (approximate driving distances).

Frequently Asked Questions About Apostle Paul in Asia Minor

1. How many cities in modern Turkey did Apostle Paul visit? Counting the cities directly named in Acts where Paul stopped, preached, changed ships, or passed through, the total is around fifteen to seventeen Turkish locations. The main inland and coastal destinations were Tarsus, Antakya, Antioch in Pisidia, Iconium, Lystra, Derbe, Ephesus, Miletus, and Alexandria Troas, while the shorter port stops included Seleucia Pieria, Perga, Attalia, Patara, Myra, Cnidus, Assos, and Adramyttium.
2. Where did Apostle Paul spend the most time? Ephesus, where he lived for three years during the third missionary journey, was the longest single ministry of his career. Antakya — ancient Antioch on the Orontes — as the operational base of his mission, was also a place of extended residence between journeys.
3. Was Apostle Paul born in Turkey? Yes. Paul was born at Tarsus in Cilicia, a city now in Mersin Province in southern Turkey. He himself emphasises his Tarsian birth in Acts 21:39 and Acts 22:3 — “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia.” His birth date is approximately 5 AD.
4. Where did Apostle Paul die? Paul was executed at Rome, most likely around 67 AD, during the persecution under the Emperor Nero. His martyrdom is not recorded in the canonical New Testament but is preserved in early Christian tradition. As a Roman citizen he was beheaded — the legal mode of execution for citizens — rather than crucified, the mode used for non-citizens.
5. Which biblical books were written in or about Pauline cities in Turkey? The Letter to the Galatians (to the churches Paul founded on the first journey), the Letter to the Ephesians, the Letter to the Colossians, both letters to Timothy at Ephesus, the Letter to Philemon (a Christian of Colossae), and First Corinthians (written from Ephesus). The Acts of the Apostles, which records Paul’s three missionary journeys, has its principal geographical setting in modern Turkey.
6. What is the Saint Paul Trail? The Saint Paul Trail is a modern long-distance walking trail in Turkey that approximately follows the route of Paul’s first missionary journey from the southern Mediterranean coast (Perga and Attalia) through the Taurus Mountains to Antioch in Pisidia (Yalvaç). The trail is about 500 kilometres long and takes around 35 days to walk completely, though sections can be walked as day hikes for visitors with less time.
7. How did Apostle Paul travel and fund his journeys? Paul travelled mostly on foot along the paved Roman trunk roads — the Via Sebaste, the Common Highway, and the old Persian Royal Road — covering roughly twenty-five to thirty kilometres a day with a small bag and a walking stick, supplemented by coastal passages on cargo and grain ships. The conditions were brutal: in 2 Corinthians 11 he lists repeated beatings, three shipwrecks, a night and a day adrift at sea, perils from robbers, and recurring hunger, thirst, cold, and sleeplessness. As for money, Paul deliberately supported himself by his trade as a tentmaker (Acts 18:3) so that he would not be a financial burden on the young churches or be accused of preaching for profit — he reminds the Thessalonians that he worked “night and day” so as not to be a charge to anyone (1 Thessalonians 2:9). He also accepted occasional gifts from established congregations, especially the generous church at Philippi (Philippians 4:15-16), and depended throughout on the hospitality of local converts and patrons, such as Lydia of Thyatira, who opened her home to the mission. In short, the man who carried Christianity across Asia Minor financed the work largely with his own hands.

A Final Reflection on Walking the Cities of Apostle Paul

When I stand with my groups in these places — in the Great Theatre of Ephesus, on the silent grass-covered mound of Derbe, at the harbour ruins of Miletus where the river silt has pushed the sea kilometres inland — I often think about the strangeness of what happened here. A single man, with no army, no fortune, and no political office, walked between these cities for some thirty years and changed the direction of human history. He had no horse for most of his journeys. He carried a small bag, a few rolls of papyrus, and the needle and thread he used to mend tents for his living. He paid his own way with the work of his hands. And the cities he passed through — some of them the proudest in the entire Roman world — are now visited by people who have largely forgotten the emperors who once ruled them, but who come, in their thousands, to walk where this one travelling tentmaker once stood.

There is a quiet lesson in the geography itself. Some of Paul’s cities are alive and enormous today — Antalya, İzmir, Konya, cities of millions. Others are empty fields where a shepherd grazes his flock among fallen columns. Antioch in Pisidia is a peaceful archaeological park above a small farming town. Derbe is a low mound that most travellers would drive past without a second glance. The world does not preserve places according to their importance in the spiritual story; it preserves them according to accident, water, trade, and earthquake. And yet the words survive even where the stones have fallen. You can read Paul’s farewell speech aloud while standing in a dry field far from any sea, and it still carries the same weight it carried on the harbour shore at Miletus two thousand years ago.

I am not a theologian. I am a guide who has spent more than twenty years walking visitors through these ruins. But I have noticed something I find difficult to put into ordinary words. The people who come to these cities — Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, and many who would not call themselves religious at all — almost always grow quiet at a certain point. It happens at different places for different people: sometimes in the theatre at Ephesus, sometimes on the empty mound of Derbe, sometimes at a roadside where you can see the old Roman paving disappear into the hills. There is a moment when the abstraction of a name in a book becomes the concreteness of a real place, with real dust, real heat, and real distance between one town and the next. And in that moment, people understand in their bodies, rather than only in their heads, what it actually cost to carry an idea on foot across a thousand kilometres of mountain and coast.

That, in the end, is why I believe these cities matter beyond their archaeology. They turn a doctrine back into a journey, and a saint back into a tired man on a road. They remind us that the most influential letters in the history of the Western world were carried in a worn leather bag, by an ageing and often unwell traveller, between towns whose ruins you can still walk through today. The empires that governed these cities are gone. The travelling tentmaker who passed through them on foot is remembered on every continent on earth. There is a deep argument hidden in that single fact — an argument about what truly lasts and what does not — and the cities of Asia Minor make that argument more powerfully than any sermon ever could. They are still here, waiting in the dust and the sunlight. You only have to go and stand in them.

Hire a Biblical Tour Guide in Turkey

I personally think there is great to learn from Apostle Paul and his journeys around Asia Minor. I also feel proud to live nearby Ephesus and spend significant time around the places Paul used to preach. Contact me to learn more about cities visited by Apostle Paul in Asia Minor and to hire a Biblical tour guide in Turkey. See you soon, Hasan Gülday.