Midyat Old Town, Silver Filigree (Telkari) and Mor Gabriel Monastery (397 AD)

Sixty-five kilometres north-east of Mardin (1 hour by car or regular minibus from Mardin Yenişehir Otogar), the limestone plateau rises into the rolling oak-and-vineyard hills of Tur Abdin, a Classical Syriac name meaning "The Mountain of the Servants of God" because more than eighty early Christian monasteries and churches were built across its valleys between the 4th and 8th centuries. At the centre of the plateau sits the twin historic town of Midyat.

1. Walking Old Midyat: The State Guest House, Gelüşke Han and Telkari Bazaar

Midyat is actually two historical towns merged into one: Muslim Kurdish and Arab Estel on the west, and Syriac Christian Old Midyat on the east, crowned by a skyline of tall, square perforated stone church bell towers:

• Midyat Konuk Evi (The State Guest House / Hacı Şehmus Mete Mansion): climb the external stone staircases of this three-storey 1850s Syriac limestone mansion (famous as the filming location for dozens of Turkish television dramas) to its third-floor open arcaded terrace, which commands a 360-degree view over the churches and stone roofs of Old Midyat.
• The Telkari (Silver Filigree) Bazaar & Gelüşke Hanı (1903): descend into the cobbled lanes around Gümüşçüler Çarşısı, where master silversmiths solder hair-thin threads of pure 925-sterling silver together by hand to create delicate lace-like telkari earrings, belts and coffee-cup holders, then pause in the vaulted stone courtyard of Gelüşke Hanı to taste local Assyrian wine or tea.
• The Underground Cave City of Matiate: discovered in 2020 right beneath the streets of Estel/Midyat, an extraordinary subterranean rock-cut city of tunnels, silos and early places of worship dating back 1,900 years.

2. Mor Gabriel Monastery (Deyrulumur, Founded in 397 AD, 23 km east of Midyat)

Twenty minutes' drive east of Midyat through oak woods stands Mor Gabriel Monastery, founded in 397 AD by ascetics Mor Shmuel and his disciple Mor Shemun, making it one of the oldest functioning Christian monasteries in the world (400 years older than the monasteries of Mount Athos in Greece). Join one of the monastery's young guides to see the 512 AD Theodora Dome (built with funding from Byzantine Emperor Anastasius I and Empress Theodora), the 6th-century gold-and-marble mosaic floor of the Main Church sanctuary, and the Beth Qadishe crypt where twelve thousand saints and monks rest.