A single arched wall is all that remains above ground of the once-magnificent Seljuk palace of the Sultans of Rum, on the northwest edge of Alaeddin Hill. The palace was begun in the late twelfth century and reached its peak under Alâeddin Keykubad I in the early thirteenth, when foreign chroniclers describe it as a complex of tiled halls, gardens, and audience chambers ranking with the great courts of the medieval Islamic world.
The Mongol invasions of the 1240s broke the dynasty, and the palace fell into ruin over the following centuries. By the early twentieth century only the surviving section visible today remained standing, a fragment now under a protective metal canopy. Tiled wall panels from the palace are displayed in the Karatay Madrasa museum nearby — extraordinary pieces with images of human figures, lions, and double-headed eagles, in styles that have no parallel in later Anatolian Islamic art. A small archaeological park surrounds the ruin.