Dara

Byzantine24 km from Mardin

A Byzantine frontier fortress city founded around AD 505 to face Persia, with huge underground cisterns and a necropolis of rock-cut tombs outside the walls.

Plan the visit Its place in history

Plan your visit

Time to allow

About 2 hours

For a first visit at an easy pace.

Stay in

Mardin

24 km away as the crow flies, so allow more on the road.

On a trip

Where it began

Day 5 of 5.

Hours and tickets

Check before you go

Opening hours and prices change: see muze.gov.tr (opens in a new tab).

Times are our estimates. Distances are straight lines.

Its place in history

Read the chapter before you go.

AD 330–1453Byzantine and ArmenianConstantine made Byzantium his capital, Constantinople, and Justinian built Hagia Sophia there.

From here

Sleep nearby

Mardin

24 km. Dara, Diyarbakır’s walls and the Mesopotamian plain.

Before this on the trip

Amida

Diyarbakır’s black basalt city walls, almost six kilometres around, with the Hevsel Gardens running down to the Tigris.

The whole trip

Where it began

5 days, 9 places, Gaziantep to Mardin.

Open in OpenStreetMap (opens in a new tab) · Directions to Dara (opens in a new tab)

Also nearby

museum
Mardin Museum

Location precise · Source (opens in a new tab)