Mersin and Cilicia: Early Christian Heritage on the Turkish Coast

The southern coast of Turkiye, where the Taurus Mountains fall away to the Mediterranean, was once the Roman province of Cilicia. It is a landscape of fertile plains and rugged headlands, of river gorges and ancient harbours. For Christians, it holds a particular tenderness, for this was the homeland of the Apostle Paul, and among its towns and shores the earliest generations of believers took root. Today much of that ancient territory lies within the modern province of Mersin, and to travel its coast is to walk through the opening chapters of the Church's story.

A province of two landscapes

The ancient geographers divided Cilicia into two parts, and the division still shapes the region today. To the east lay Cilicia Pedias, the "level" or "smooth" Cilicia: a broad, well-watered plain where Tarsus flourished as a wealthy commercial city on the Cydnus river. To the west lay Cilicia Tracheia, the "rugged" Cilicia, a coast of limestone crags, hidden coves and mountain valleys running up towards the Taurus. Between them the sea carried trade from Cyprus, Syria and the wider Roman world, while inland the famous Cilician Gates, a narrow pass through the mountains, linked the coast to the Anatolian plateau.

This was no backwater. Cilicia sat at a crossroads of empires and cultures, Greek and Roman, Semitic and Anatolian. It is precisely the kind of place from which a man could emerge who was at home in several worlds at once.

Paul of Tarsus, a son of Cilicia

Scripture is emphatic about Paul's roots. When he addressed a hostile crowd in Jerusalem, he identified himself plainly: "I am a Jew, born at Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel" (Acts 22:3). Earlier he had described his birthplace with quiet pride as "no mean city" (Acts 21:39). Paul was a Roman citizen by birth, a Jew of the diaspora, and a native of this Cilician metropolis, all at once.

His life turned not in Cilicia but on the road to Damascus, where the risen Christ met him in blinding light (Acts 9). Yet Cilicia remained woven into his story. Writing to the Galatians of the years after his conversion, Paul recalls that he "went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia" (Galatians 1:21), returning to the country of his birth before his great missionary journeys began. Years later, setting out again, he "went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches" (Acts 15:41), for by then communities of believers were already established in his home province. To understand the man, it helps to understand the land that formed him. You can read more in our companion piece on Who Was the Apostle Paul? and on Where Is Tarsus?

The Christian coast of Mersin

Beyond Tarsus itself, the Mersin coast preserves a remarkable density of early Christian and late-antique sites, many of them still visible today.

• Seleucia and the shrine of Saint Thecla (Silifke). The town of Silifke stands on ancient Seleucia ad Calycadnum. On the hill above it, at the place long known as Ayatekla (Meryemlik), lie the ruins of a great sanctuary honouring Saint Thecla, venerated from early centuries as a companion figure in the Pauline tradition and one of the first women held up as a model of Christian courage. By late antiquity her shrine had become one of the most important pilgrimage destinations in all of Asia Minor, drawing travellers from across the Mediterranean.
• Alahan Monastery. High in the Taurus above the Mut valley, the fifth-century monastic complex of Alahan survives as one of the finest examples of early Byzantine church architecture in Anatolia, its carved basilicas looking out over a vast mountain landscape. It speaks of a flourishing monastic life that took hold across Cilicia in the centuries after Paul.
• The coastal cities. Between Mersin and Silifke the shore is lined with the remains of Greco-Roman and early Christian settlements: Soli-Pompeiopolis near Mersin with its long colonnaded avenue; Elaiussa Sebaste and Corycus (today's Kızkalesi) with their harbours and basilicas; and the ravines of Kanytelis and the great Corycian caves, where later Christian chapels were built into a landscape the ancients had held sacred.

Together these sites form a continuous witness. The faith that Paul carried outward from this coast returned to shape the region for a thousand years, leaving churches, monasteries and pilgrim roads that endure as ruins and, for the believer, as prayer made visible in stone.

A homeland for the whole Church

What makes Cilicia so moving for Christians today is its ecumenical breadth. Paul belongs to no single confession; he is honoured by Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant faithful alike as the great apostle to the nations. The monasteries of the Taurus and the shrine at Silifke were living centres of prayer for the undivided Church of the first millennium. To stand on this coast is to be reminded of a common inheritance older than the divisions that came later.

The region's story also opens outward. From Cilicia the roads ran east to Antioch, where the disciples were first called Christians, and onward to the cities of Asia Minor and Greece. Those who wish to trace the wider journey may turn to our accounts of Antioch and the Birth of the Early Church and The Missionary Journeys of Saint Paul.

Cilicia in the 2027 gathering

It is fitting that St Paul Global Week should unfold here, in Tarsus and Mersin, on the very coast that shaped the apostle. The inaugural edition takes place on 28–30 June 2027, gathered around the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul on 29 June, with a special focus on the life, mission and legacy of Paul in the city of his birth. The programme sets his story within the wider Christian heritage of Cilicia, and the Feast Day observance is broadcast live worldwide for those who cannot travel.

To place the region within the full three days, see the event programme and our reflection on why Tarsus stands at the heart of it. Community and church leaders wishing to bring a group into this landscape may learn more through the Hosted Delegation Leaders programme.

Cilicia asks little of the pilgrim except attention: to look at the plain where a tentmaker was raised, at the mountains he crossed, at the shore from which the Gospel went out to the nations. In 2027, on the feast of the two great apostles, that quiet coast will once again gather Christians from around the world to remember, and to give thanks.