Saint Paul's Church, Tarsus

Tarsus, in the Cilicia of the antiquity, in what is now southern Turkey, was an important city during both ancient and medieval ages.

He was born and lived in Tarsus as a Jew named Saul and, after converting, made a number of missionary journeys ending in his arrest and beheading by the Roman Emperor Nero in AD 64 or 67 on the 29th of June.

Medieval Mersin's most important Christian sanctuary was the Armenian cathedral of Hagia Sophia in which Leon I of the House of Rubenid was crowned by Konrad Von Wittelsbach, the Archbishop of Mainz and the representative of Pope, as the king of the Cilician Kingdom of Armenia in 1198.

The Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick I, drowned in Saleph (now called Göksu) river on 10 June 1190, his heart and inner organs might be buried in the Saint Paul's Church.

[1] According to tradition the building date of the Saint Paul Church is 1102, but the present structure, a domeless basilica, was built (or rebuilt) much later, in 1862.