Guide
The Tolerance Way is a walking and cycling route of about 126 km between İzmit, ancient Nicomedia, and İznik, ancient Nicaea, built on old paths through the country between the two cities that Rome once governed.
The name looks back to 30 April 311, when the emperor Galerius issued what is the first known edict of tolerance anywhere, allowing Christians to worship and to rebuild their churches so long as they kept within the law. It was proclaimed from Nicomedia, then the imperial capital and the only city bearing the rank of metropolis, and it inspired the edict of Milan in 313, which widened that freedom to every religion.
The road between the two cities remained in use for at least 1,700 years. Charles de Peyssonnel, a French traveller and ambassador, travelled it in 1745; Robert Chamber, a Canadian botanist, followed in 1906. In 1955 work started on a road through Bahçecik to bring İznik's fruit and vegetables to İstanbul by the most direct way, and the 1960 coup stopped it before it was finished.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Kocaeli as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 6.3 °C in January to 24 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May, June, July, August, September and October; rainfall is heaviest in December (108 mm) and lightest in August (42 mm). Long-term means for 1929-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
