Ancient Civilizations of Anatolia:

The Hittite Legacy

Cultural tour through central Turkiye. Archeology, architecture, imperial cities, underground cities, Byzantine cave churches, whirling dervishes, Greco-Roman theaters, and more!

April 14-25, 2027  Registration open

April, 2028

 

This tour is designed for those that enjoy history, natural beauty, culture & civilization, local cuisines, wine culture, traditional music and arts, visiting UNESCO World Heritage sites, and learning about and exploring new places.

Highlights:

  • Neolithic: Çatalhöyük
  • Hittite: Hattusa, Yazilikaya, and Alacahöyük (also Ankara archeology museum)
  • Phrygian: tumulus of Midas at Gordion
  • Lycian/Pamphylian/Greek/Roman: Attalia, Side
  • Christian: Cappadocia UNESCO cave cities
  • Sufi mysticism: tomb of Rumi
  • Seljuk: Sultanhani caravanserai, Konya
  • Ottoman: Amasya

For new visitors to our company, please see our review page to get a sense of why our small group tours are so popular!

Details:

  • Arrive: Ankara, Turkiye (airport designation ESB).
  • Depart: Antalya, Turkiye (airport designation AYT).
  • Transport: Private coach
  • 12 day overland travel itinerary (11 nights).
  • Visas: US, EU, UK, and AUS passport holders do not need a visa for Turkiye. For other nationalities, check the country listings.
  • Maximum 24 guests (only a deposit secures a place on tour).

Tour Leaders:

Accommodation:

  • Best available boutique hotels.

Brochure:

Registration:

  • Submit registration form (sent at your request)
  • Send deposit of $1500 to secure your place (details in registration form)

Our Tour route:

 

 

Fees:

  • Details in the tour brochure. Please email us for a copy!

Tamada Club

  • $300 discount for this tour if you have been on a tour to Georgia!

Payment Methods:

  • Bank transfer (preferred)
  • Credit card via Paypal (3% Paypal charge applies)

Pre/Post-Tour Options

  • While we are not offering extension trips ourselves, we recommend spending a few days in Istanbul in advance of this tour. After the tour, if you would like to continue independent travel along the southern Turkish coast, we can make recommendations.

Included:

  • Accommodation in high quality boutique hotels specially vetted for comfort and location
  • All ground transportation including airport transfers
  • All meals with delicious local wines (except for 1 dinner at leisure, as indicated in the itinerary)
  • All entrances
  • Guides
  • Entertainment (traditional performers)
  • Special access events: meet our colorful friends!
  • Water and snacks on the bus (we pamper our guests!)

Not Included:

  • International airfare
  • Tips for primary guides and driver
  • Personal services (laundry)
  • Travel insurance (required)

Mobility-Fitness:

  • Standard: 6/10 on the mobility scale (10 being the most demanding). Lots of walking at sites and around towns. Rocky trails at archeology sites, and underground city in Cappadocia.
  • For some locations, we may need to wheel suitcases 100 yards to the hotel among narrow streets where the bus cannot access. Pack accordingly.
  • General fitness required. There are stairs to the sites, and sometimes long distances to cover on foot. Walks are on uneven rocky terrain, sturdy footwear required.

Special Notes:

  • This will be flower season!
  • Mid-tier small boutique hotels on this itinerary, historic buildings! One resort hotel at end of tour.
  • Lots of arts and music on this itinerary.
  • History - Archeology focus on this tour.
  • Hot air balloon ride in Cappadocia!

Weather:

  • In the highlands of Cappadocia, we can expect spring weather that might include rain (temps 70F). At the seaside in Antalya, we can expect hot weather (85F). For those opting for the hot air balloon ride in Cappadocia, wool hat recommended because it is chilly in the pre-dawn hours!
  • April is the height of spring, we'll have many gorgeous days, with all of the fruit trees blossoming across the countryside!

Travel Program…

Our cultural tour of central Anatolia aims to investigate the many civilizations whose cultures and histories overlap one another like pages of a palimpsest manuscript. As such, we will offer a suggested reading list, and fill the tour with site overviews, lectures, Q&A, and guided tours to enhance our understanding and imagination of these ancient civilizations. The first agrarian societies were born here. Hunter-gatherer groups began experimenting with agriculture and stable location-based lifestyles here.

Later, in the rise of the great bronze age empires, none was more feared and powerful than the Hittite Empire, who competed for dominance of the known world with Egyptians, the Myceneans, and the Assyrians. All of these empires collapsed simultaneously in the 12th century BC for reasons we will explore on this tour. Our dive into Hittite culture starts on Day 2 with a long visit to the incredible Hittite collections housed in the Ankara archeology museum, followed by visits to their capital cities at Alacahöyük on Day 3, and Hattusa on Day 5.

We encounter local Anatolian peoples whose architectural legacy reflects Hellenistic contact such as the Lycian League, a group of city states credited with inventing one of the first parliamentary system of government in the world. We visit the Pamphylian-Roman harbor city of Side on Day 10 when we arrive at the Mediterranean coast. This city retains an impressive Greco-Roman theater, and a deeply significant Christian history. Apostles Paul and Barnabas landed at nearby Perge before setting inland on a missionary trip, returning to the same port city after preaching the Gospel to the local population. We see further Hellenistic influence in one of the most unlikely places on Day 4, the town of Amasya. Known primarily for its opulent Ottoman mansions, mosques, and madrasas, the home of Sultan’s principal heirs, the cliffs above the city show a far older cultural layer in the tombs of Mithridates I and other Pontic kings from the Black Sea coast. Our main interest in our rest day in Amasya will be the Ottoman legacy.

The sprawling canyons and underground cities of Cappadocia are some of the best places in the world to imagine early Christian communal life. At the center of our tour (Days 5-6-7), we plan to spend three nights in Cappadocia in order to fully explore and understand the ways in which daily life, worship, and security-concerns articulated the architectural styles of their cave dwellings. Inside the cave chapels, we find some of the finest Christian art from the 6th-10th century period, as seen in the vibrant colors of the Goreme chapel frescoes which express the pathos and veneration of the earliest Christian saints. It’s remarkable to realize that these images were painted when the memories of martyrdoms and sacrifice were still fresh in mind for the communities praying in these sacred spaces.

Our exploration of early sufism highlighting the Mevlevi tradition awaits us on Day 9. It’s most famous disciple, Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī (Rumi), remains one of the most influential writer-philosophers of the day, with prose on the human and the divine that never grows outdated. After seeing the charming Ottoman palaces in a narrow river valley of Amasya, the grandiose architecture of Konya reminds us of the might and power of the great Seljuk Sultanate of Rum that dominated central Anatolia during the 12th-13th centuries.

In an homage to our own position as travelers through this land, we pay a visit to Sultanhani on Day 8, one of the most well preserved caravanseries in all of Anatolia. There, like travelers of old, we will find a brief respite, a bit of food and water, some conversation about the road ahead, and continue our journey through the center of the world. Our tour concludes with a voyage down the river to the sea, where we will spend our final two evenings at a beach hotel in Antalya, expressing gratitude for the long friendships that continue to sustain us. Join us on this extraordinary adventure, it promises to be the trip of a lifetime.

Read more about our program in the pages that follow! To register, request our brochure and registration form by email: admin@johngrahamtours.com

 

 

Tour Videos (Ancient Civilizations of Anatolia playlist)

 

Tour Locations:

Ankara

+ In Ankara, our main aim is to visit the incredible curated collections in the Museum of Ancient Civilizations, which houses the most important collections related to archeological excavations of the known Hittite cities. We take a day trip to Gordion Ancient City & Midas Tumuli.

Amasya

+ On the way to Amasya, we visit the Hittite sites of Hattusa, Alacahöyük, and the Yazılıkaya rock sanctuary. In Amasya, we explore the Ottoman-era mansions associated with the Sultan's summer vacation homes, and the tombs of ancient kings of Pontus.

Cappadocia

+ Our three day exploration of Cappadocia will include the UNESCO heritage site cave monasteries, as well as more obscure underground cities, viewpoints, and the opportunity to take a hot air balloon ride.

Konya

+ In Konya, we'll be visiting the Mevlana museum to learn about the whirling dervish Sufi order, and the influence of Jalaladdin Rumi on his contemporaries and later Islamic thinking. We also take a day trip to see one of the oldest cities unearthed anywhere: Çatalhöyük (7500 BC).

Antalya

+ We finish the tour with a discussion of the local Lycian-Pamphylian peoples, who inherited a Hittite related Luwian language and lived along the south-central coast. They were a sea-faring people who traded with Egypt, the Levant, and later, Greece, and Rome. Apostle Paul traveled through the region.

 

Request the full brochure! Email: admin@johngrahamtours.com