UNESCO World Heritage · Şanlıurfa, Türkiye
The world’s oldest known temple
Eleven and a half thousand years ago — before pottery, metal or farming — hunter-gatherers raised rings of carved stone pillars on a hilltop in Upper Mesopotamia. This is Göbeklitepe.
What is Göbeklitepe?
Monumental architecture, built before farming
On a limestone ridge about 15 km north-east of Şanlıurfa, Göbeklitepe — also written Gobeklitepe, and long known internationally as Göbekli Tepe — is a complex of great oval enclosures ringed by T-shaped limestone pillars, some over five metres tall and carved with foxes, snakes, vultures and boar.
Built between roughly 9500 and 8000 BCE by people who had not yet begun to farm, it overturned the long-held idea that monuments required cities and agriculture — and reframed how we understand the dawn of civilisation.
The monuments
The great enclosures
Four monumental enclosures — A, B, C and D — have been excavated so far, each a ring of T-pillars set into benches around two taller central pillars.
Enclosure D
The best-preserved circle and the Vulture Stone.
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Enclosure C
The largest circle, wrapped in concentric walls.
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Enclosure A
The Snake Pillar Building, alive with carved serpents.
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Enclosure B
Pillar 10 and its fox — the emblem of the enclosure.
Read moreThe carvings
A bestiary in limestone
Foxes, snakes, wild boar, vultures, scorpions and aurochs prowl across the pillars — a wild, dangerous and overwhelmingly male world, with abstract signs no one can yet read.
The most famous stone of all is Pillar 43, the Vulture Stone, in Enclosure D: a crowded panel of birds, a snake, a scorpion and a headless figure that the excavators link, cautiously, to Neolithic ideas about death.
Discover
The questions Göbeklitepe asks
Some of the most famous claims about the site are interpretations that have shifted over time. These guides separate the headline findings from the open questions.
Who built it?
Hunter-gatherers, not farmers — more than 100,000 wild-animal bones tell the story.
02What are the T-pillars?
Abstract human figures? Ancestors? The carved arms, hands and belts hold clues.
03Why was it buried?
Deliberate ritual entombment, or natural infill? A debate that has shifted.
04The world’s first temple?
A pure sanctuary, or a place where worship and daily life went hand in hand?
05Temple, then farming?
How Göbeklitepe reframes the origins of agriculture and settled life.
06What is still unknown?
Were the enclosures roofed? What do the symbols mean? Only a tenth is dug.
Deep time
Older than old
More time separates Göbeklitepe from Stonehenge than separates Stonehenge from us. When the first pillars were carved, the pyramids lay further in the future than they now lie in the past.
Plan your visit
An hour from Şanlıurfa, a journey to the Neolithic
A protective canopy shelters the main enclosures, and an elevated boardwalk lets you walk above the great circles. Pair your visit with the Şanlıurfa Archaeology Museum, where most of the finds — and Urfa Man, the oldest life-sized human statue — are displayed.
Beyond the mound
Şanlıurfa and the Stone Hills
Göbeklitepe is the flagship of a whole Neolithic landscape — and Şanlıurfa, its base city, is one of the oldest continuously inhabited places on Earth.
Good to know
Questions visitors ask
Short, sourced answers — with the debates flagged as debates.
How old is Göbeklitepe?
Its monuments date to roughly 9500–8000 BCE — about 11,500 years old, some 6,000 years older than Stonehenge and about 7,000 years older than the Giza pyramids.
Can you go inside the enclosures?
No. Visitors follow an elevated boardwalk above the enclosures beneath a protective canopy; the trenches themselves are closed. The Şanlıurfa museum has a full-scale replica of Enclosure D you can walk through.
Is it really the world’s oldest temple?
It is the oldest known monumental architecture. Whether it was a “temple” in the strict sense is an interpretation that the current research team treats with caution — ritual and everyday life appear to have coexisted here.
How do I get there?
About 15 km north-east of Şanlıurfa — 20 to 25 minutes by car or taxi — with a free shuttle from the visitor centre to the mound. The nearest airport is Şanlıurfa GAP (GNY).
Read here, plan there
When you are ready to go
This guide explains Göbeklitepe. Our sister site gobeklitepeai.com, run by the same team, helps you plan the trip: itineraries, tours and day trips, places to stay and airport transfers.
Free companion app
The whole site in your pocket
Walk the boardwalk with Göbeklitepe Walk: an offline map of every enclosure, live GPS on the ridge, and a guide to what you are looking at — online or off.
- Enclosures A–D mapped, with GPS between them
- Works fully offline — download once before you set out
- Guides to the central pillars, the reliefs and Karahan Tepe
- Free, no subscription, in eight languages
