The well known as St Paul's Well stands in the courtyard of the place long held to be the apostle's house, in the quarter of Tarsus where the old houses stand thickest. The wellhead stone is a cylinder, but the shaft below it is square, built of dressed rectangular blocks. Its water has been regarded as holy, and is held to heal.
Excavation in the garden, continued until recently, brought up walls and cultural layers reaching down to Paul's own period. The architecture uncovered there has been covered with glass to shield it from the weather. That these remains and the well have been treated as sacred for so long is read as a trace of the belief of the Christian community that lived in the city until recent times, and the place is one of the significant pilgrimage sites of Christianity. St Paul's church, the well and their surroundings were put forward in 2020 as a candidate for the UNESCO World Heritage list as a single spiritual centre. The address is Kızılmurat Mahallesi, 2710 Sokak, Tarsus, and the site is reached on local town transport.
Getting there
- Access
- City transport reaches it.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Mersin as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 10.4 °C in January to 28.5 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in April, May, October and November; rainfall is heaviest in December (137 mm) and lightest in August (7 mm). Long-term means for 1929-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
Visiting hours
- Hours
- 08:00 - 19:00
