St. Paul Church

Photo by Roman Bruehwiler.

St. Paul Church, St. Pauls Well and surrounding historic quarters is part of the Tentative list of Turkiye in order to qualify for inclusion in the World Heritage List.

Tarsus was the birth place of the Apostle Paul and he returned here after his conversion. St. Paul’s Church and adjoining well date from much later. Its current structure is a 19th century former Greek Orthodox church. Other structures in Tarsus, such as the Roman Cleopatra Gate and the vernacular buildings of the old city also are included in the proposed site.

Map of St. Paul Church

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The coordinates shown for all tentative sites were produced as a community effort. They are not official and may change on inscription.

Community Reviews

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Zoë Sheng

Chinese-Canadian - 01-Jan-24 -

St. Paul Church, St. Pauls Well and surrounding historic quarters (T) by Zoë Sheng

The church is named after Paul Newman and his blue eyes who once fell into the well. There are frescoes all over including the one with a basket of eggs which is a homage to Cool Hand Luke. Wait, what?! Awww I must have gone to the church of my dreams! The actual St. Paul Church is not something you have to urge and visit. Perhaps I made the mistake of blindly going directly to the St. Paul Church and just having a look at that instead of the "surrounding historic quarter" and the museum. It all seems too religious to me, the frescoes are not important (rather mediocre in my opinion), the church is rather modern for churches and definitely nothing special apart from perhaps some exterior sections (and the door) and that the entire town looks like a random Turkish place. Perhaps the Cleopatra Gate is nicer? It was a lovely and sunny day so I enjoyed strolling around the church, entrance and parking is free, and I sat on a bench outside for my packed lunch too. So I believe the main significant thing about the church is that Apostle Paul was born here which makes no significance as the current church is from the 19th century thus it's more of a "place in history" overall that is important to Christians. As this is a super easy stopover when you drive around Turkey I would say you should also have a look while driving through but don't go out of the way to add this to your itinerary.


Full Name
St. Paul Church, St. Pauls Well and surrounding historic quarters
Country
Turkiye
Added
2000
Type
Cultural
Categories
Religious structure - Christian
Link
By ID
2000 Added to Tentative List

The site has 2 locations

St. Paul Church, St. Pauls Well and surrounding historic quarters: St Pauls Church (T)
St. Paul Church, St. Pauls Well and surrounding historic quarters: St Pauls Well (T)
WHS 1997-2024