Zoë Sheng

Chinese-Canadian - 01-Jan-24 -

The church is named after Paul Newman and his blue eyes who once fell into the well. There are frescoes all over including the one with a basket of eggs which is a homage to Cool Hand Luke. Wait, what?! Awww I must have gone to the church of my dreams! The actual St. Paul Church is not something you have to urge and visit. Perhaps I made the mistake of blindly going directly to the St. Paul Church and just having a look at that instead of the "surrounding historic quarter" and the museum. It all seems too religious to me, the frescoes are not important (rather mediocre in my opinion), the church is rather modern for churches and definitely nothing special apart from perhaps some exterior sections (and the door) and that the entire town looks like a random Turkish place. Perhaps the Cleopatra Gate is nicer? It was a lovely and sunny day so I enjoyed strolling around the church, entrance and parking is free, and I sat on a bench outside for my packed lunch too. So I believe the main significant thing about the church is that Apostle Paul was born here which makes no significance as the current church is from the 19th century thus it's more of a "place in history" overall that is important to Christians. As this is a super easy stopover when you drive around Turkey I would say you should also have a look while driving through but don't go out of the way to add this to your itinerary.