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Pilgrimage · Turkey · Antalya & Isparta Provinces (ancient Pamphylia and Pisidia)

St Paul Trail

Aziz Paul Yolu

A modern waymarked trail through the Taurus Mountains, following where Paul's first mission is believed to have passed.

Stations
7 of 7
Traditional duration
No traditional walking practice — a modern (2008) long-distance trail; most visitors today drive between the waypoints rather than hike the full route
Founded
The ancient cities span the Hellenistic through Byzantine periods (4th c. BCE – 6th c. CE); the trail connecting them as a route was created in 2008
Focus
The apostle Paul's first missionary journey (Acts 13–14) through Roman Pamphylia and Pisidia
Best season
Spring (April–May) and autumn (September–October); summer heat in the lowlands and winter snow in the Taurus Mountains make other seasons difficult

Key questions

What is St Paul Trail?
St Paul Trail is a Christianity pilgrimage route in Turkey, Antalya & Isparta Provinces (ancient Pamphylia and Pisidia). A modern waymarked trail through the Taurus Mountains, following where Paul's first mission is believed to have passed
How many stations are on St Paul Trail?
This guide currently maps 7 stations, with 7 total sites noted in the route metadata.
When is the best time to walk St Paul Trail?
Spring (April–May) and autumn (September–October); summer heat in the lowlands and winter snow in the Taurus Mountains make other seasons difficult

Opening

The trail begins at the Pamphylian coast, at Perge, where columned streets and a stadium still stand under the Antalya sun, and climbs inland through the Taurus Mountains toward the high, cooler plateau of ancient Pisidia. Between the two lies country that changes character as sharply as its elevation: citrus groves give way to gorge and pine forest, then to the bare limestone highlands around Eğirdir Lake, before the trail descends again into the wheat country around Antioch of Pisidia, near modern Yalvaç. Whoever walks or drives this line moves through the same geography — coast to gorge to highland plateau — that shaped how Roman roads, and the region's earliest Christian communities, were laid out in the first place.

Origins

The seven stops on this page are ancient cities and landscape waypoints, not one continuous ancient monument: Perge and Aspendos were major Pamphylian cities; Selge and Adada were highland Pisidian cities, each with their own temples, theaters, and civic life; Köprülü Canyon and Zindan Cave/Yazılı Canyon are natural gorges that carried the Roman road inland and, in Zindan Cave's case, held a documented sanctuary of their own (a river-god and mother-goddess cult of the 1st–2nd century CE, later rebuilt as a Byzantine basilica); and Antioch of Pisidia was the Roman colony where, according to Acts 13, Paul preached in the synagogue on his first missionary journey. The connecting thread — 'the St Paul Trail' — is a modern waymarked walking route created in 2008 by cartographer Kate Clow and the Culture Routes Society, tracing a plausible line between places Paul's journey is recorded as having passed through or near. It is not an archaeologically certified ancient pilgrim road, and no ancient text places Paul inside any specific gorge along the way — the trail's claim on his footsteps is inferential, built from the geography Acts describes rather than a preserved itinerary.

Why pilgrims walk it

Most people who complete any real distance on this trail today are long-distance hikers drawn by the Taurus Mountains scenery and Roman-road engineering as much as by scripture, and the trail's own promotional materials are candid that it's a modern cultural-heritage route rather than a devotional circuit with an unbroken practice behind it. For Christian travelers, though, the appeal is real: this is honest, walkable ground for picturing the world Paul's first mission moved through — market towns, mountain passes, colonial cities with their own gods before his arrival — without needing to treat every gorge or ruin as a confirmed relic of his passage. Others come for the archaeology on its own terms: Aspendos's theater and Adada's three standing temples reward the trip regardless of what one believes about the man the trail is named for.

Significance

Antioch of Pisidia carries the clearest textual claim to Pauline significance — Acts 13 places his synagogue sermon there, and the city's excavated remains (including a substantial church built centuries later) reflect its importance to the early Christian community that followed. The other six stops matter on their own historical terms: Perge and Aspendos as major Pamphylian cities (Aspendos's theater is among the best-preserved in the ancient world), Selge and Adada as highland Pisidian centers with their own long religious histories, and the two canyon sites as both natural landmarks and, at Zindan Cave, a genuine multi-era sacred site independent of any Pauline association. Held together, they document a region's Roman civic and religious life more richly than they document one apostle's route through it — which is worth knowing before treating this as a pilgrimage in the Camino sense.

The route

7 stations on the map

Click any marker to open that station. Numbered pins follow the traditional route order.

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Stations

Walk the route in order

Each station opens onto its own page. Origins, the experience of arrival, what is held there. Stations not yet on Pilgrim Map will appear here as their pages are completed.

  1. 1

    Station 1

    Perge

    Aksu, Antalya, Mediterranean Region

    Perge is one of the most complete Roman-period cities in Turkey — a colonnaded metropolis of theatres, baths, and triumphal gates set in the Pamphylian plain east of Antalya. Beneath its Roman skin lies a city inhabited for six millennia, centered on the hilltop sanctuary of Artemis Pergaia, whose cult fused the Greek goddess with a far older Anatolian mother-deity and drew pilgrims from across the eastern Mediterranean.

  2. 2

    Station 2

    Aspendos

    Serik, Antalya, Mediterranean Region

    Aspendos is the site of the most intact Roman theatre on earth — its full stage building standing two stories high as it was constructed in the 2nd–3rd century CE, still used today for opera performances. The ancient city around it, founded by descendants of the legendary seer Mopsus, includes a monumental aqueduct system, agora, and temples. The theatre does not merely represent antiquity; it holds it, complete.

  3. 3

    Station 3

    Köprülü Canyon

    Beşkonak, Manavgat, Beşkonak, Antalya Province

    Köprülü Canyon cuts fourteen kilometers through Mediterranean limestone in Turkey's Antalya region, its walls rising as high as 100 meters above the Köprüçay river. A Roman bridge still spans the gorge, part of the ancient road that once linked the Pamphylian coast to the hill city of Selge. Since 2008 the canyon has also carried the Beşkonak branch of the St Paul Trail, a modern walking route built to trace the general countryside of Paul's first missionary journey inland from Perga.

  4. 4

    Station 4

    Selge

    Antalya, Köprülü Canyon area

    Selge occupied a natural fortress at 1,250 metres in the Taurus, overlooking the gorges of what is now Köprülü Canyon National Park. Among the most powerful cities in ancient Pisidia, it resisted Hellenistic pressure and maintained proud independence through the Roman period. Its theater survives largely intact; its Zeus temple awaits excavation; the village of Altınkaya still overlaps with its ruins.

  5. 5

    Station 5

    Adada

    Sütçüler / Sağrak, Isparta Province, Mediterranean Region

    Adada is among the best-preserved and least-visited ancient cities of inland Turkey, its three temple facades still standing against the Taurus foothills after nearly two thousand years. A branch of the Saint Paul Trail ascends to its ruins through a mountain landscape that has changed little in two millennia. The city's archaeological record spans from Hellenistic polytheism through Roman imperial cult to early Christian catechumenate spaces — a complete arc of ancient religious transformation.

  6. 6

    Station 6

    Zindan Cave, Yazılı Canyon

    Aksu, Aksu / Sütçüler, Isparta Province

    Zindan Cave and Yazılı Canyon are two distinct locations roughly 35-40 km apart in Isparta Province, treated here as sequential stops on the same ancient road and modern St Paul Trail corridor toward Antioch of Pisidia, rather than as a single site. Zindan Cave preserves a genuine 1st-2nd century CE sanctuary to the river god Eurymedon and the mother-goddess Meter Theon Ouegeinos, later rebuilt as a 5th-6th century Byzantine church. Yazılı Canyon is a karst gorge carrying a Byzantine-era philosophical inscription and a more contested devotional tradition tying it to Paul.

  7. 7

    Station 7

    Antioch of Pisidia

    Yalvaç, Isparta, Mediterranean Region

    At over a thousand meters on the Anatolian plateau, Antioch of Pisidia preserves the ruins of the Roman colonial city where Paul delivered one of his most consequential sermons. Acts 13 records that when the Jewish leaders expelled him from the synagogue, Paul explicitly declared his mission turning to the Gentiles — a statement that became the theological foundation of the universal church. The Temple of Augustus, carved into the city's highest rock, still stands.

Walking it today

The full St Paul Trail runs roughly Antalya to Lake Eğirdir and beyond, waymarked with red-and-white flags and signposts by the Culture Routes Society; through-hikers typically take several weeks. Most visitors to these seven sites instead drive a loop from Antalya, since the ancient cities and canyons are reachable by road and some (Köprülü Canyon, Selge, Adada) are remote enough that a vehicle is the practical choice outside a dedicated trekking trip. Köprülü Canyon and Yazılı Canyon are both protected national/nature parks with entrance arrangements; check current opening information before visiting, and carry water and sun protection — shade is scarce at the ruin sites and the canyon trails involve real elevation change.

Related pilgrimages

Other paths in this lineage

  • Seven Churches of Revelation

    Another New Testament-linked route through western Turkey's Roman cities, tracing the seven churches addressed in the Book of Revelation rather than Paul's first journey — a natural pairing for travelers building a longer early-Christian-sites itinerary in the region.

Sources

  • Culture Routes Society — St Paul Trail official route documentation (cultureroutesinturkey.com).
  • Acts of the Apostles 13–14 (Antioch of Pisidia synagogue sermon, Perge, and the first missionary journey narrative).
  • Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism — national park and archaeological site listings for Köprülü Kanyon, Yazılı Kanyon, and the excavated cities of Perge, Aspendos, Selge, Adada, and Antioch of Pisidia.