Via Sebaste
Perge to Lystra
The route
The surveyed line begins at Perge, a few kilometres inland from the coast near Antalya, heading north across the plain towards the Taurus. The Roman road climbed the range by the pass known as Climax, the Döşeme Boğazı, where a milestone near the summit is numbered 139 miles from Antiochia. Over the top it reached the colony of Comama, in what is now Burdur province.
From Comama the line runs north through the Pisidian lake country to Apollonia at Uluborlu, then east to Antiochia outside Yalvaç. This was the caput viae, the head of the road, from which every mile was counted.
East of Antiochia the road skirted the Sultan Dağları past Kıyakdede, where a milestone marked XXX survives in the village mosque, and reached Pappa Tiberiopolis at Yunuslar. Lengths of roadbed survive near Yenidoğan and Sefaköy. It then came down into Lycaonia to Iconium, modern Konya, then turned south for some 30 kilometres to Lystra near Hatunsaray, another Augustan colony.
The surveyed line
- Mapped length
- 460 km
- Mapped segments
- 38
- Line certainty
- Conjectured
Measured across every Itiner-e segment attributed to this road. A conjectured stretch is one whose course is inferred from evidence either side of it; that covers 82% of the mapped length here. This describes how precisely the line is known, not whether the road existed.
The road today
No modern road keeps to the Via Sebaste for long. The highway from Antalya to Burdur crosses the Taurus on its own line. An Ottoman carriage road of the late nineteenth century had already left the Roman pass, which is partly why the ancient roadbed in the Döşeme gorge survived. North of the mountains the roads linking Isparta, Uluborlu and Yalvaç cover much the same ground, though rarely on the Roman alignment.
East of Yalvaç the road towards Beyşehir parts from the ancient route near Kireli. Beyond there the Roman line is easier to trace by its milestones and by the Seljuk caravanserais that later went up beside it than by any modern carriageway. Iconium itself lies beneath the centre of Konya.
Where to see it
The Döşeme pass, north of Antalya, holds the finest surviving stretch: about two kilometres of Roman roadbed climbing some 250 metres, with the ruins of a late Roman roadside station and an Augustan milestone still in place near the summit. Perge keeps its Hellenistic gate towers and colonnaded street; many of its finds are in the Antalya Museum.
At Antiochia, outside Yalvaç, visitors can see the city gate, the temple of Augustus and standing arches of the aqueduct. The Yalvaç Museum displays fragments of the Res Gestae, Augustus's own account of his reign, found in front of that temple. At Kilistra, near Lystra, a section of the road is cut straight into the bedrock.
Common questions
Why is it called the Via Sebaste?
Sebastos is the Greek rendering of Augustus, so the name means the Augustan road. Milestones dated 6 BC record that Augustus built it through his governor Cornutus Aquila.
Did St Paul use the Via Sebaste?
Probably. Acts 13 and 14 take Paul and Barnabas from Perge to Antioch in Pisidia, then to Iconium and Lystra. The Via Sebaste was the Roman road linking those towns. The Bible never names the road.
Can you walk the Via Sebaste?
In places. The Döşeme pass north of Antalya has a well preserved stretch. The waymarked St Paul Trail runs about 500 kilometres from Perge to Yalvaç, though it does not always keep to the Roman line.