The basilica lies about 200 metres south-west of Oylum Höyük, in the Oylum quarter of Kilis: an early Christian church of the sixth century AD whose floor mosaic covers some 800 square metres. Part of it was uncovered in 1999 and almost all of it in the excavations of 2004 and 2006.
The plan is a long rectangle, built of local stone — black basalt together with limestone. The entrance is on the west, and two rows of columns divide the interior into three aisles. The excavations produced two inscriptions, a great many Roman and medieval coins and the remains of column bases, but the capitals belonging to those columns were not found; the capital standing in the garden of the provincial directorate is said to have been brought from here.
The floor mosaic carries the character of early Byzantine art: plant motifs of leaves worked in red, white, brown, grey, orange and black stone, geometric patterns of intersecting circles, lozenges, squares and zigzags, and interlaced ornament arranged in the form of a Maltese cross.
The mosaics were found to be in good condition, and work to cover them over so they would not be damaged began in 2015 and was completed in 2017. The site protection and landscaping work was provisionally accepted on 16 August 2017.
Getting there
- Access
- In the Oylum quarter of central Kilis, about 200 m from Oylum Höyük.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Kilis as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 5.9 °C in January to 28.2 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in April, May and October; rainfall is heaviest in December (85 mm) and lightest in July (3 mm). Long-term means for 1959-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
