The site that rewrote the textbooks
For decades we were taught that farming came first, then villages, and only at the end, once there were surpluses and hierarchies, temples. In 1994 a German archaeologist, Klaus Schmidt, turned his attention to a hill in south-eastern Türkiye, and the excavations he led found the opposite: a monumental sanctuary raised 12,000 years ago by hunter-gatherers who had not yet started to farm.
Göbekli Tepe is some 6,000 years older than Stonehenge and 7,000 years older than the pyramids of Giza. Its T-shaped pillars, up to 5.5 metres tall and weighing as much as 16 tonnes, are carved with foxes, wild boar, snakes, vultures and scorpions, and some have arms and hands: they are stylised human figures. Most puzzling of all, a few centuries later the enclosures were buried, apparently on purpose, by the people who built them. Nobody knows why.
What to see
Göbekli Tepe
The site is a 20-minute drive from Şanlıurfa, and you visit it along covered walkways that circle the round enclosures. Less than ten per cent of it has been excavated: what you see is impressive, but what still lies underground is even more so. Go with a guide. Without someone to explain what you are looking at, it is a few stones in a pit; with the story behind them, it is one of the most astonishing sites in Türkiye. At the time of writing, the official 2027 ticket also covers Karahantepe, its sister site, which has been excavated more recently.
Şanlıurfa Archaeological Museum
One of the finest museums in the country and the essential companion to the site. Here you will find original pillars, full-scale reconstructions and the Urfa Man, the oldest known life-size statue of a human being: 11,000 years old, with his obsidian eyes still in place. Allow two hours.
Balıklıgöl, the Pool of Abraham
The sacred heart of the city. According to Islamic tradition, this is where King Nimrod threw Abraham onto a pyre and God turned the fire into water and the embers into fish. The pools are full of sacred carp that are never fished, surrounded by gardens, golden-stone mosques and local families spending the afternoon. This is a living place of pilgrimage, not a monument: be respectful, and if you go into the mosques, cover your shoulders and knees (women should also cover their hair).
The bazaars of Urfa
Some of the most authentic markets left in Türkiye. In the Gümrük Hanı, a 16th-century caravanserai, men play dominoes under the vines and drink mırra, the bitterest coffee in the country. Around it run lanes of coppersmiths, fabric sellers, spice merchants and weavers of goat-hair rugs. Nobody chases after you to sell you anything.
Harran and its beehive houses
About 45 kilometres away, out on the Mesopotamian plain, stand conical mud-brick houses that have been built the same way for centuries, because nothing else copes as well with summer heat that can approach 50 °C. Harran was a city of the Sabians, had one of the earliest universities of the Islamic world, and appears in the Book of Genesis as the place where Abraham lived before setting out for Canaan. Entry to the site is free at the time of writing (2026).
When to go
From March to May and from October to November. Summer in Urfa is extreme: in July the thermometer regularly climbs past 40 °C in the shade and can reach 45 °C, which makes visits to Göbekli Tepe and Harran very hard going. In spring the plain is green and the temperatures are ideal.
Getting there
Şanlıurfa GAP Airport (GNY), about 35 km from the city, has daily flights from Istanbul and Ankara (about 1 h 45 min from Istanbul). Many travellers combine Urfa with Gaziantep, two and a half hours away by motorway, and with Mount Nemrut, about three hours away: together, the three make the classic route through the south-east.
What to eat
Urfa is one of Türkiye's great food cities, and the cooking here is a little less fiery than in Adana but more fragrant with spice. Çiğ köfte is kneaded by hand for forty minutes and eaten wrapped in a lettuce leaf; Urfa's lahmacun is thinner than elsewhere; and the aubergine kebab, patlıcan kebabı, is cooked in a wood-fired oven. For breakfast, try menemen with bread straight out of the tandır.
How to fit it into your trip
Two days are enough for the city, Göbekli Tepe and Harran. The usual plan is to pair Urfa with Gaziantep, for its Zeugma mosaics and its food, and with Mount Nemrut, on a four- or five-day route through the south-east: you fly in from Istanbul and fly back from Adana or Gaziantep. If you are short of time, my Göbekli Tepe and Mardin tour covers Urfa, Harran and Mardin in three days, with domestic flights from Istanbul.