Gobeklitepe, Zeugma & Halfeti Tour from Gaziantep – 2 Days

Included today: lunch, hotel, transfers and entrance fees.

A Gaziantep pick-up, Roman mosaics at Zeugma, a boat trip on the Euphrates and a night in Sanliurfa.

08:30 – Your guide and driver meet you at the agreed point: Gaziantep Airport, your hotel or the bus station (pick-up time and airport may change). A short drive takes you to the Zeugma Mosaic Museum near the city centre.

12:30 – Lunch at a local restaurant near Halfeti, a midday pause before the boat. The cooking of Gaziantep province is among the most distinctive in Turkey, and the meal reflects it. Drinks are extra.

17:30 – Departure from Halfeti for Sanliurfa. After the boat and riverside stops, you drive east for about an hour and a half on the road along the Euphrates valley.

Route: Zeugma Mosaic Museum → Halfeti Town → Boat Tour on the Euphrates → Rumkale → St. Nerses Church → Barsavma Monastery → Submerged Ruins and Water Cisterns

• Zeugma Mosaic Museum – Zeugma was a wealthy Roman frontier city on the Euphrates. Many of its floor mosaics were lifted and saved just before the Birecik Dam flooded the site, and they offer a rare look at Greek and Roman home life from the 2nd century BC. The star is the Gypsy Girl, a haunting portrait now among the best-known Roman artworks in the world. The collection covers more than 1,700 square metres of myths, hunting scenes and fine geometric panels to match anything around the Mediterranean.
• Halfeti Town – a small town on the Euphrates known for two things. It sits just above the waterline of the Birecik Dam reservoir, and it grows near-black roses, a strain that thrives almost only in this microclimate and blooms a deep burgundy that looks black in full sun. Part of the old lower village went under water when the dam was finished, and the upper town still feels quietly displaced. A walk through its stone-built riverside streets before the boat shows its unhurried character.
• Boat Tour on the Euphrates – from the Halfeti dock the boat moves slowly upstream toward Rumkale, past flooded stone houses, rocky outcrops and riverside cliffs. On clear days old minarets and rooftops show just below the surface. Still water, a fortress ahead and church walls rising from the hillside make this stretch unlike any other river trip in Turkey.
• Rumkale – the 'Roman Castle' stands on a rocky spur where the Merzimen meets the Euphrates, a position that made it almost impossible to take under Byzantine, Armenian and Crusader rule. Its walls and towers, seen from the boat, show centuries of defensive building, with some masonry dating to the 1st century BC. From the water it is easy to see why so many armies tried, and mostly failed, to keep it.
• St. Nerses Church – an Armenian church from around the 10th century, now half under water, with its upper walls and arches still above the surface. It is one of the most photographed sights of the boat trip and a trace of the Armenian Christian community that once thrived along this part of the valley, showing how history and modern infrastructure overlap here.
• Barsavma Monastery – an early Christian monastery cut into a cliff above the river, reachable only by boat and seen from the water as a row of arched openings in the rock. It is believed to date from the Syriac Christian era, part of the dense cluster of early church communities in this corner of southeastern Turkey. Being so hard to reach has kept much of its original character, and the slow approach by boat suits it.
• Submerged Ruins and Water Cisterns – the Birecik reservoir covered large parts of the old settlement of Rumkale and several smaller villages. When the water is low, outlines of streets, walls and cisterns appear below the surface, mixing landscape with visible loss. The Roman-era stone cisterns are often still recognisable, depending on season and water level, and your guide points them out on the way back.

19:30 – Arrival in Sanliurfa and check-in at the included hotel. The evening is free to explore the old city on your own or rest before the long second day.

Included today: breakfast, lunch, transfers and entrance fees.

Sanliurfa's mosque complex and mosaic museums in the morning, Gobeklitepe and Karahantepe in the afternoon.

08:00 – Breakfast at the hotel before check-out. Your guide meets you in the lobby at 09:00.

09:00 – After check-out, a walking tour of Sanliurfa's old city. The sacred sites, the mosque complex and the mosaic museums all lie close together near the historic centre.

13:00 – Lunch in Sanliurfa, a break between the city walk and the afternoon drive to the prehistoric sites. The local food reflects the city's place where several ancient trade routes met. Drinks are extra.

Route: Halil-ur Rahman Mosque → Cave of Prophet Abraham → Balikligol (Pool of Sacred Fish) → Sanliurfa Archaeology Museum → Haleplibahce Mosaic Museum → Gobeklitepe → Karahantepe

• Halil-ur Rahman Mosque – on the edge of Balikligol and a pilgrimage site since medieval times, built where tradition says the Prophet Abraham landed safely after Nimrod threw him into the fire. The courtyard overlooks the sacred fish pool, and the mosque is still in daily use by pilgrims from across the Islamic world. Living worship, Ottoman stonework and the legendary pool below make it one of the richest settings in southeastern Turkey.
• Cave of Prophet Abraham – Abrahamic tradition holds that this cave in the Mevlid-i Halil complex is where Abraham was born, which makes it deeply important to Muslims, Christians and Jews. You step down into a small chamber where pilgrims pray quietly all day, a more intimate and thoughtful visit than any museum. The pools and the Halil-ur Rahman Mosque are steps away, and together the three form the spiritual heart of old Sanliurfa.
• Balikligol (Pool of Sacred Fish) – this large pool at the centre of the Mevlid-i Halil complex is full of carp that local tradition protects as holy, and pilgrims feed them as a blessing. The story says God turned the embers of Nimrod's fire into water and carp when Abraham survived, and it draws believers and the curious alike. A colonnaded walkway, old plane trees and the mosque frame a scene that has barely changed in centuries.
• Sanliurfa Archaeology Museum – one of Turkey's most important prehistoric collections, with halls for finds from Gobeklitepe, Karahantepe and the wider Tas Tepeler excavations that have changed how we see early civilisation. Seeing the museum before the sites is close to essential: reconstructed T-shaped pillars, carved animal reliefs and site models make the open-air ruins much clearer. Other galleries cover the Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Bronze Age, Assyrian and Roman periods, with good labels in English and Turkish.
• Haleplibahce Mosaic Museum – built over a large Roman mosaic floor found during building work in central Sanliurfa, it opened in 2015 and is one of Turkey's most unusual museum settings. The centrepiece is a double-panel hunting scene of Amazon warriors and wild animals, covering more than 180 square metres and among the largest and finest Roman mosaic floors found in Turkey. The mosaics stay where they were found, inside a climate-controlled hall, and you view them from raised walkways directly above.
• Gobeklitepe – the oldest known monumental religious architecture in the world, about 6,000 years older than Stonehenge and more than 7,000 years older than the Egyptian pyramids. Round enclosures of T-shaped limestone pillars, some over 5 metres tall and up to 20 tons in weight, carry animal reliefs and abstract signs carved by hunter-gatherers who had no farming or permanent villages yet. It turned the old view that religion followed farming and towns on its head, and digs still under way keep finding new enclosures below ground.
• Karahantepe – Gobeklitepe's closest neighbour in the Tas Tepeler group, opened to visitors only recently after excavations began in 2019. It shares the T-shaped pillars but has a different artistic style: several pillars show human faces and full figures not seen at the older site, pointing to a separate phase of Neolithic ritual and art. Visiting straight after Gobeklitepe lets you see the differences clearly and gives the prehistoric part of the trip a strong storyline.

17:00 – At the end of the program your driver takes you to Sanliurfa Airport or the city bus station, depending on your onward plans. Please tell us your choice when you book.