Did You Know … ? Information

In Turkey great historical and legendary figures have been born, such as King Midas, the first historian, Herodotus, Saint Paul, Homer and Plato.

The Trojan War described in Homer’s Iliad took place in western Turkey around 1200 BC. There is a replica of the Trojan horse, symbol of the end of this war, which in addition to the Iliad inspired numerous literary and artistic works.

Two of the seven wonders of the world are found in Turkey, in Anatolia: the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus (Bodrum) and the Temple of Artemis (Ephesus), both located on the Aegean coast.

The oldest landscape painting in the world, with 8 thousand years, is located in the southern city of Çatalhöyük, named in 2012 by UNESCO, a World Heritage Site. The work shows an erupting volcano.

The birth of Christianity occurred in Turkey, where the apostles Paul and John preached their gospels. The Virgin Mary spent her last years in a little house near Ephesus, which in 1967 the Vatican declared as a “holy site”.

The seven churches mentioned in the book of revelations are found in Anatolia. In Antioch (now Antakya) St. Paul began to preach the word of God and the followers of Jesus were called “Christians” for the first time. There is a cave where it is believed that San Pedro preached when he lived in the city. In 1963 the Pope declared it as “the first cathedral” and is a place of pilgrimage. In the same way, the cave where the patriarch Abraham is supposed to have come into the world, who according to the old testament, was born in Sanli Urfa, southeast of Turkey, has become a place of this type.

The idea of ​​the Universal Flood, which appears in the ancient testaments of the Bible and the Koran, has also been closely linked to this country, because as it is referenced, Noah’s Ark landed on Mount Ararat, in eastern Anatolia . For centuries many expeditions have tried to find their traces.

The walls that still remain in the city of Istanbul, the largest metropolis in Turkey, are the original walls, built in 324 AD, on the orders of Constantine I of Rome.

The tulips were brought to Holland from Turkey for the first time.

Santa Claus or Santa Claus was born in Patara and was Bishop of Demre, on the Mediterranean coast.

The coffee was first brought to Istanbul from Yemen in the 16th century. The Turks created a new method to prepare this brew, which we call “Turkish coffee”. Drinking coffee is an important part of Turkish culture.