Iconium: The Plateau City on Paul's First Journey

Iconium is an ancient city of the central Anatolian plateau that continues without a break as Konya, one of the larger cities of modern Türkiye. On the Apostle Paul's first missionary journey it was one of four inland towns — with Pisidian Antioch, Lystra and Derbe — where he preached, made converts, and met organised hostility. Because Paul's letter to the Galatians is widely (though not universally) read as addressed to these very congregations, Iconium sits close to the heart of his early mission. As throughout this reference, claims are labelled by their evidentiary weight — (Scripture) for what the New Testament text states, (Tradition) for later Christian or local memory, and (Scholarship) for the findings of modern history and archaeology — and dates are given as ranges, since the chronology of the journeys is a scholarly reconstruction with no absolute ancient dates. (Scholarship)

Where it is, ancient and modern

Iconium lay on the well-watered western edge of the wide Lycaonian plain, at the meeting of the regions the ancients variously called Lycaonia and Phrygia; in Paul's day it belonged to the Roman province of Galatia. (Scholarship) A note on region names is worth keeping: Acts itself distinguishes Iconium from the towns just beyond it, describing how Paul and Barnabas "fled to Lystra, and Derbe, cities of Lycaonia" (Acts 14:6, Douay-Rheims), which reads as though the fugitives crossed from one district into another. (Scripture) The plateau setting — fertile, watered by springs, and astride the roads that crossed Anatolia — is the standing explanation for the city's long prosperity. (Scholarship)

The city has been continuously occupied ever since, so the modern city of Konya stands directly on top of the ancient one. Its identification is therefore secure through unbroken settlement rather than through a single excavated inscription, but for the same reason most of Roman Iconium lies buried beneath the living town, and little of the classical city is exposed. (Scholarship)

Iconium in the story of Paul

Iconium enters the narrative of the Acts of the Apostles when Paul and Barnabas, driven out of Pisidian Antioch, "shaking off the dust of their feet against them, came to Iconium" (Acts 13:51). (Scripture) What follows is a compressed account of a mission that succeeds and then splits the town. "And it came to pass at Iconium, that they entered together into the synagogue of the Jews, and so spoke that a very great multitude both of the Jews and of the Greeks did believe" (Acts 14:1). (Scripture) The response was not brief: "A long time therefore they abode there, dealing confidently in the Lord, who gave testimony to the word of his grace, granting signs and wonders to be done by their hands" (Acts 14:3). (Scripture)

As at other stops, success brought opposition. "The unbelieving Jews stirred up and incensed the minds of the Gentiles against the brethren" (Acts 14:2), and "the multitude of the city was divided; and some of them indeed held with the Jews, but some with the apostles" (Acts 14:4). (Scripture) When "there was an assault made by the Gentiles and the Jews with their rulers, to use them contumeliously, and to stone them" (Acts 14:5), the two understood the danger and fled to the Lycaonian towns of Lystra and Derbe (Acts 14:6). (Scripture)

Iconium's shadow follows Paul beyond its walls. At Lystra, a short way to the south, "there came thither certain Jews from Antioch and Iconium: and persuading the multitude, and stoning Paul, drew him out of the city, thinking him to be dead" (Acts 14:19). (Scripture) Yet Iconium was not abandoned. On the return leg of the same journey Paul and Barnabas deliberately retraced their route, coming "again to Lystra, and to Iconium, and to Antioch, confirming the souls of the disciples" and appointing elders in each church (Acts 14:21–23). (Scripture) The town therefore had a settled Christian community soon after its founding, well enough regarded that when Paul later recruited Timothy at nearby Lystra, it was "the brethren that were in Lystra and Iconium" who "gave a good testimony" to him (Acts 16:2). (Scripture)

A further recollection of suffering at Iconium appears in the letter 2 Timothy, which lists "persecutions, sufferings: such as came upon me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra" (2 Timothy 3:11). (Scripture) This memory matches the Acts narrative closely, though it should be flagged that the Pauline authorship of the Pastoral Epistles, including 2 Timothy, is disputed by many scholars, so it is best treated as supporting rather than independent testimony. (Scholarship)

Tradition: Paul and Thecla

Iconium is also the setting of one of the most famous stories about Paul that is not in the New Testament. The second-century apocryphal *Acts of Paul and Thecla* places at Iconium the conversion of Thecla, a young woman who hears Paul preach and follows him, undergoing trials from which she is miraculously delivered. (Tradition) The work was widely read in the early church and made Thecla a celebrated figure of later devotion, but it is an apocryphal legend, not a canonical or historical source, and should be presented as tradition rather than as an event of Paul's documented life. (Tradition / Scholarship)

What remains, and what a visitor sees

Because Konya has been lived in continuously for more than two thousand years, ancient Iconium is a city one stands on rather than one that stands exposed. (Scholarship) The Roman-era town lies beneath the modern streets, and there is no single excavated "Pauline" monument of the kind sometimes shown at coastal sites; what the visitor encounters is a great living Anatolian city whose depth of history is the point. This makes Iconium a place of memory and continuity — a link in the chain of the first journey — more than a field of ruins. Reading it alongside the identified-but-unexcavated mounds of nearby Lystra and Derbe helps set expectations honestly: on this stretch of Paul's route, the map is more secure than the stones. (Scholarship)

Fact and tradition

The firm facts about Paul and Iconium are those the text supplies: that he preached in the synagogue there and won "a very great multitude" (Acts 14:1), that the city divided and a plot to stone him drove him out, that opponents from Iconium pursued him to Lystra, and that he returned to strengthen the young church. The Thecla story, celebrated as it is, belongs to later tradition, and the ancient city itself is attested by continuous occupation rather than by a marked shrine. Holding these apart — narrated Scripture, apocryphal tradition, and the buried archaeology of a living city — is what lets Iconium be understood clearly. To place it in the wider journey, see our reference on the Apostle Paul and on Tarsus, the city of his birth.

It is that journey, begun in the land where Paul was raised, that St Paul Global Week honours. On 28–30 June 2027, around the 29 June Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, a faith-tourism gathering organised by Funny Tourism will bring pilgrims to Tarsus and Mersin, in the birthplace of the Apostle, with the Feast Day prayer programme broadcast live worldwide. You are warmly invited to explore the programme, to learn why Tarsus, and — for church and community leaders who wish to bring a group — to read about the Hosted Delegation Leaders programme or to contact the organiser.