This is the real home of St. Nicholas—and it’s not the North Pole

Before the iconic red suit and the sleigh, the real St. Nicholas lived and died in ancient Lycia, modern-day Antalya Province, Türkiye. St. Nick didn’t grow up with reindeer. He grew up walking among Roman marble, smelling salt in the air. 

“By all accounts, he was raised in a Christian family,” says Dr. Adam English, Christian studies professor and author of The Saint Who Would Be Santa Claus: The True Life and Trials of St. Nicholas of Myra. “At that time, Christianity was still an illegal and minority faith, an occasionally persecuted faith. But by the time he dies, Christianity is now the accepted, approved, and endorsed religion of the empire. So, there’s a real sea change in the course of Nicholas’ life.”

Travelers today can take a road trip through the Turkish Riviera to see where he was born, preached, and interred. Anchored by airports in Dalaman and Antalya, this coastal route brings you through the footsteps of one of the world’s most famous saints. 

Here, far from malls and bells, you’ll find the man behind the myth. 

Gemiler Island (St. Nicholas Island)

This journey begins where Nicholas’ story ends. Gemiler Island—believed to be the saint’s original resting place—sits just offshore of the town of Ölüdeniz. It holds the ruins of five Byzantine churches, several tombs, and a ceremonial walkway for processions. Centuries ago, ships bound for the Holy Land stopped here to pray before venturing farther east. 

Some historians believe that Nicholas’ remains were initially interred on Gemiler before the local Christian community transferred his bones to Myra to protect them from invading forces. But like the relics of many saints, the exact location of St. Nick’s bones is subject to great debate. Others think the island’s association is symbolic, part of a broader regional memory of the saint’s movement along the coast. The most common theory says he was interred here until 1087, when Italian sailors stole the relics. 

As the story goes, “47 sailors from Bari, Italy come in, smash open the tomb, and grab the bones,” says English. But “it doesn’t seem that they got all the little fragments of the bones, so Venetian sailors came about a decade later,” taking what was left and triggering a centuries-long debate over Nicholas’ final resting place.

Bari built a basilica for its relics. Venice followed. Today, fragments purported to be Nicholas’ bones rest in reliquaries large and small, including at the Antalya Archeological Museum in Antalya, about 137 miles northeast. 

Once back to the mainland, continue your road trip 90 minutes southeast to Patara—the saint’s birthplace, and one of the great cities of his time. 

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Patara, the birthplace of St. Nicholas

Patara originated as an early Lycian settlement with Bronze Age roots. The strategic and prosperous trading port later came under Persian, Athenian, Macedonian, and finally Roman control. Today, it’s a wide-open sprawl of ruins framed by farmland and dunes. 

Nicholas was born here around 270 C.E. into a well-off Christian family—unusual for a time when Christianity was illegal and marginalized. His parents died when he was young; an uncle, likely a priest, raised him. Tradition says he gave away much of his inheritance to the poor over the years, kickstarting his reputation for enormous generosity. 

In his time, Patara had all the trappings of a major metropolis: a 39-foot-tall lighthouse, a 5,000-seat theater, and a council chamber of the Lycian League. (The collection of 23 city-states was considered the world’s first democratic confederation.) It traded directly with Egypt and Rome and housed the oracle of Apollo, a prophetic site second only in fame to Delphi. 

Clear evidence of this bustling urbanity remains. Columns still line the agora, separating the footprint of ancient stores. Gladiator relief carvings in the refurbished theater hint at the creative dramatics once enacted there. And the nearby bouleuterion—the Lycian parliament building—delivers a sweeping window into this formative seat of power. The entrance fee to the park hovers around $18, depending on the exchange rate, and it is included in Türkiye’s Museum Pass. Patara’s first modern archaeological excavations began in 1988. Ongoing excavation, part of a nationwide push to excavate hundreds of sites across Türkiye, promises to unfurl still more stories.

Near the city’s necropolis lies the Kaynak Church and cemetery. English speculates this is where the saint once worshiped: “The dating of the ruins, especially considering that the current structure was built on top of burial sites for Christian saints/martyrs and community members, suggests the presence of a Christian community in the area during the life of Nicholas,” he says via email. “So, it is extremely reasonable that this was his boyhood church.”

A short drive past the ruins leads travelers to Patara Beach, one of the longest and least developed stretches of the Turkish coastline. Loggerhead sea turtles nest in the dunes, and a small beach hut serves as a mosque for oceanside prayer.

Demre (Ancient Myra)

From Patara, the coastal road runs east toward Demre, known in antiquity as Myra.  Nicholas spent most of his adult life here as bishop, performing the miracles that would lead to lasting international fame.

Two sites reveal this small town’s prominent standing in Lycian times. One is the soaring rock-carved necropolis and Roman theater on the edge of town. The second is the Church of St. Nicholas, formally known as St. Nicholas Memorial Museum. The entrance fee is about $18.

Just outside the museum entrance, a statue of Nicholas with children stands. It’s the latest in a series of contested effigies that speak to the international acclaim of this once-humble bishop: “They’ve had three statues here,” English says. “The Coca-Cola Santa. A Russian bishop. And now a Turkish-looking man with kids. Everyone wants to claim him.” 

(Where's Santa buried? Resting places of the real St. Nick.)

Nicholas was a young cleric when the bishop of Myra died, so he traveled from Patara to pay his respects. As local clergy debated a successor, one had dreamed that the new bishop would be named Nicholas. When the young priest arrived, they saw the dream fulfilled.

His new role carried spiritual weight, but not much else. “At that time, [the title bishop] would have meant kind of a head pastor,” English says. “You're talking about a very, very humble position.”

For holding little formal power, he had an outsized impact on his flock. 

“One man was very rich, and he lost all his wealth. He had three daughters who he wanted to sell to be rich again,” tour guide Uraz Nehir, owner of Cicerone Adventures, tells me as we drive to the church. “And when Nikolai heard that, he started to prepare a bucket of coins. He threw the first bucket from the window…and he kept throwing money into the house” until the father had enough to pay for dowries, thereby saving the women. 

In some versions of the story, he threw gold down the chimney—it landed in a sock drying overnight by the fire. 

How did St. Nicholas become Santa Claus? “Well, it's definitely through that story—the idea of the nighttime, anonymous gift giver,” says English.

The Church of Saint Nicholas, standing today, dates to the sixth century and rises on the site where he is believed to have ministered. After silt flooded the church in the Middle Ages, Russian Czar Nicholas I funded the museum’s initial archaeological excavation in the 1860s. 

The building sits dozens of feet below modern ground level and bears heavy Christian iconography.Ancient mosaics unfurl below arched walls adorned with crosses and colorful murals of saints, as well as a multitude of anchors—likely a reference to St. Nick’s role as the patron saint of sailors. 

Researchers believe that if his body was moved from Gremiler Island, it lies in a recently-discovered annex below the building. But that does not stop many visitors from treating the most prominent topside sarcophagus as the saint’s burial site. A plastic barrier—erected between the prominent sarcophagus and visitors—does little to stop pilgrims from slipping their fingers in a small gap near the floor to touch the well-worn stone, muttering prayers.

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Antalya, Türkiye

Antalya appears on the horizon north of Demre, a modern city wrapped around a historic core. Here, the Antalya Archaeology Museum (set to reopen in post-renovation late 2026) holds a small but significant collection tied to the bishop. Its centerpiece is a reliquary containing bone fragments attributed to Nicholas. Nearby, a nineteenth-century icon depicts him in Eastern Christian vestments, surrounded by devotional objects from Lycian and Byzantine sites. 

The museum’s transformation mirrors the eternal retelling of St. Nicholas’ story. “Throughout the 20th century… scholars had a large amount of doubt that this person even existed,” says English. That changed in the 1980s and ’90s, when excavations in Myra accelerated, and researchers discovered documents in Bari that testified to his life. So, although “it’s a very old story, in some ways these are really recent developments. We really do know something about this person in ways that your grandparents didn’t,” English explains.

The man behind the myth continues to emerge—slowly, steadily—from the very landscape he once walked.

(Beyond the beach, Antalya makes for a cultural city break)