Meram Audioguides

When the Seljuk sultans wanted relief from the summer heat of Konya, they came to Meram, a district of orchards and vineyards fed by the Meram Stream. The retreat they chose is now one of Konya's most pleasant quarters, with traditional stone vineyard houses built into the hillsides and the 13th-century Sircali Medrese preserving Seljuk tilework under its distinctive blue-tiled portal. The Sahip Ata complex nearby, another monument from the same century, displays the characteristic carved stonework of the Sultanate of Rum at its most accomplished.

Meram sits at around 1,016 meters on the western edge of the Konya Plain, and its elevated position still functions as a green lung for the wider city.

Konya itself is inseparable from the legacy of Jalal ad-Din Rumi, the 13th-century Sufi poet whose mausoleum and the Mevlana Museum lie in the central city a short drive away. To visit Meram is to glimpse the secular pleasures of the Seljuk world behind the more austere religious sites: vineyards, gardens, and a stream valley that offered shade when the plain offered none.