Ah, Antioch, Queen of the East!  The famed Western terminus of the Silk Road!  The greatest city of Roman Syria!  I’ve wanted to visit it for many years.

Alas, the modern city of Antakya (aka Hatay) is a pleasant provincial Turkish city, but with only glimmers of its great past. I kept a wary eye open for Patriarchs, but none of the five modern contenders for the title of Patriarch of Antioch and All the East actually deigns to live in the modern city.

I managed to persuade a taxi driver to take me to the old City Walls.  It turned out that he had no idea what I was talking about, but we stopped and got directions and all was well.  They are on a ridge to the East of the city, but you can’t approach them directly.  You need to circle around to the back of the ridge and come in from the East: first head roughly 5 km NE along Antakya Reyhanli Yolu (E91), then about 6 km south, towards Kuruyer, then back about 1km NW.  Look for the signs saying “Antakya Kalesi”.  We eventually found an old ruined tower and neighbouring sections of wall, set just outside the top of one of the jagged hill ridges surrounding Antioch.  This is presumably part of Justinian’s wall, perhaps part of the keep?  A little bit beyond the walls there is a small cafe and viewpoint, with a good view over the city.

Back in the city I toddled around the fine Archaeological Museum.  This has a variety of good pieces, including a very fine 3^rd c. AD sarcophagus and some 13^th c. bc Hittite entry lions, amidst much else.  But the highpoint is an amazingly large collection of 2^nd to 5^th c. AD mosaics.  They are all somewhat damaged, but some are of very high quality.  The general aim is Western-style “photo realism”, which is fine by me.  I am amazed at how well they can sketch a human face with only a few fragments of stone

After visiting the local Tourist Information stand and (rather to my surprise) getting a bunch of helpful English brochures and a map, I strolled over to the Habib-I Neccar Mosque. This site started as a Roman Temple, was converted to a church, became a Mosque in 636 with the first Arab conquest, became a Church in the Byzantine reconquest, became a Mosque again in the Arab reconquest, became a Church again after the Crusader conquest, and then ended up as a Mosque after another Islamic reconquest. Needless to say the building is not the original, it has been through a number of restorations and rebuilds, notably in 1268 and 1857.

On the NE outskirts of the city is the Cave Church of St Peter. This is supposedly one of the very earliest Christian churches, founded by Peter himself. The modern cave has been heavily restored of course, with a 19th c. cut stone facade.