Izmir and ancient Ionia

The claw-like mass of land extending west from İzmir terminates near ÇEŞME, most low-key of the central Aegean’s main coastal resorts. The immediate environs of Çeşme are green and hilly, with added colour from the deeply aquamarine sea and the white of the electricity-generating windmills on the approach to the peninsula. The climate here is noticeably drier, cooler and healthier than anywhere nearby on the Turkish coast, especially in comparison with occasionally hellish İzmir or muggy Kuşadası. These conditions, combined with the presence of several thermal springs, have made the peninsula a popular resort for over a century.

A picturesque, often sleepy town of old Greek houses wrapped around a Genoese castle, Çeşme (“drinking fountain” in Turkish) doubtless takes its name from the many Ottoman fountains, some still functioning, scattered around its streets. Despite guarding the mouth of the İzmir Gulf, it has figured little in recent history other than as the site of a sea battle on July 5, 1770, when the Russian fleet annihilated the Ottoman navy in the straits here.

The town’s three main streets all radiate off Cumhuriyet Meydanı, the town’s largely pedestrianized main square. İnkilap Caddesi, the main bazaar thoroughfare heads off north and east, while Çarşı Caddesi, its continuation, saunters south along the waterfront past the castle, kervansaray and most of the travel agencies before veering slightly inland. The town’s esplanade hugs the waterfront to the north passing the small fishing port until it reaches a small crescent-shaped beach. It’s all very pleasant, in a low-key way.

ALAÇATİ, 9km southeast of Çeşme, is one of the region’s most upmarket resorts, favoured with İstanbul’s cosmopolitan elite. Formerly a somewhat isolated Greek village, its resurgence began when one of the town’s charming old stone houses was turned into a swish designer hotel, the Tas Otel. This proved so popular that, within a few years, it had spawned over a dozen equally stylish and tasteful imitators, not to mention a similar number of gourmet restaurants. Strict building regulations have meant that, in the centre of town at least, this rapid growth has had little effect on the character of the place, and it’s still architecturally stunning. Its old lanes and cobbled streets, particularly on the main thoroughfare, Kemalpaşa Caddesi, are dotted with antique shops, art galleries and snazzy boutiques selling designer goods.

The town’s 300-metre-long sandy beach is 4km south. Most visitors head here to take advantage of the unique windsurfing and kiteboarding conditions; the strong, reliable “Meltemi” wind, combined with shallow water and lack of waves makes the bay ideal for learners.

The best local beaches are those along ALTİNKUM, a series of sunbaked coves 9km southwest of Çeşme, beyond the seaside township of Çiftlik. Altınkum is easily reached by dolmuş, and between June and September the service continues a kilometre or so from the bus stand at the first cove to the central cove, stopping opposite the tiny jandarma outpost. This is probably the best beach between Bozcaada and the Turquoise Coast, where multi-hued water laps hundreds of metres of sand and dunes.

With a spare day, the inland towns and villages of the Küçük Menderes valley, southeast of İzmir, can be visited by public transport, as connections from both İzmir and Selçuk are good. To reach Birgi village, the lake at Gölcük or the conservative town of Tire, you first have to travel via the undistinguished market town of Ödemış – 80km southeast of İzmir.

A sleepy community of half-timbered houses lining both slopes of a narrow valley at the foot of Boz Dağ, BIRGI, 9km east of Ödemış, is an excellent example of what small-town Turkey looked like before the wars and cement mania of the twentieth century.

The main thing to see is the Aydınoğlu Mehmet Bey Camii, also called the Ulu Cami, an engaging fourteenth-century mosque on the site of an earlier church. It’s across the ravine from the Çakırağa Konaği, a little way upstream. A sculpted lion has been incorporated into the exterior walls; inside it’s an understated masterpiece, with the tiled mihrab and a single arch betraying a Selçuk influence. Most impressive, though, are the carved hardwood mimber and shutters, some of them replacements for those carted off to the Selimiye Camii in Edirne. The sloping wooden roof is supported by a forest of Roman columns, the whole effect more like Spanish Andalucia than Turkey.

Birgi’s houses – ensembles of wood and either brick, stone, lath-and-plaster or half-timbered mud – run the gamut from the simple to the sumptuous. Many are dilapidated, but the restored eighteenth-century Çakırağa Konağı mansion operates as a museum and has some explanatory panels in English.

The imposing outline of Samsun Dağı, otherwise known as Dilek Dağı (the ancient Mount Mycale), dominates the skyline south of Kuşadası and may inspire notions of a visit. Regular dolmuşes make light work of the 28km trip to the national park established around the mountain.

The Dilek Yarımadası Milli Parkı was set aside in 1966 for, among other reasons, the protection of its thick forest and diverse fauna, which is said to include rare lynx, jackal and wild cats. However, you are unlikely to see any of the species in question as much of the 28,000-acre park is an off-limits military zone. The most visited portion of the unrestricted zone consists of a ten-kilometre stretch of mostly paved road beyond the entrance and four good, but often windswept, beaches along it – İçmeler (hard sand shaded by plane trees), just beyond the gate; Aydınlık Koyu (pebbles); Kavaklı Burun (pebbles); and the last and prettiest one, Karasu (700m of pea gravel). Each beach has its own small snack bar or drinks kiosk operating in high season.

Best access to the summit ridge east of 1237-metre Samsun Dağı (Dilek Tepesi) is via a trail from ESKIDOĞANBEY, a village to the south. This is an all-day outing, best done in spring or autumn to avoid the heat. Chances of wildlife-spotting, particularly badgers, jackals and birds of prey, are probably better here than within the confines of the national park on the other side of the mountain. Since the closure of most short-term accommodation in Eskidoğanbey, walkers tend to take an early dolmuş to one or other of the trailheads, hike over the mountain, and take an evening dolmuş back to Söke or Kuşadası from the walk’s endpoint. There are no facilities for staying overnight in the park, though it does provide WCs, barbecue areas and a small café.

A laid-back farming town only two decades ago, SELÇUK has been catapulted into the limelight of premier-league tourism by its proximity to the ruins of Ephesus. The flavour of tourism here, though, is markedly different from that at nearby Kuşadası; its less prestigious inland location, good-value accommodation and ecclesiastical connections (not least, the burial place of St John the Evangelist) make it a haven for a mix of both backpackers and religious tours.

Although evidence of settlement as early as 2000 BC has been found atop Ayasoluk hill, the town only really flourished as a Byzantine enterprise during the fifth century AD, after the harbour of adjacent Ephesus had completely silted up. Despite being the site of key events in the life of Sts Paul, John and (supposedly) the Virgin, local Christianity was mostly restricted to the village of Kirkince, now Şirince.

Selçuk offers a variety of antiquities from diverse eras (not least in its excellent Ephesus Museum), which can easily be toured in a single day. The town’s sights are numerous and interesting enough to warrant another night’s stay after visiting Ephesus, especially if you also plan on heading out to the shrine at Meryemana or the hill-village of Şirince.

ŞIRINCE, a well-preserved, originally Greek-built hill-village, situated 8km east of and above Selçuk, is surrounded by lush orchards and vineyards – you can taste the wines and buy them at the many wine shops here. Laden with pesky hawkers in season, it’s a much more pleasant and relaxed place outside summer and genuinely lives up to its reputation as one of the region’s most idyllic villages.

At the edge of Şirince stands a late nineteenth-century church, with a pebble-mosaic floor, plaster-relief work on the ceiling and wooden vaulting. Nearer the middle of the village there’s a larger stone basilica dating from 1839 and restored as an art gallery. But the main point of a visit is the idyllic scenery and the handsome domestic architecture, which, since the late 1980s, has attracted wealthy urban Turks in search of characterful vacation homes.

With the exception of Pompeii, Ephesus (Efes in Turkish) is the largest and best-preserved ancient city around the Mediterranean; and, after the Sultanahmet district of İstanbul, it’s the most visited tourist attraction in Turkey. The ruins are mobbed for much of the year, although with a little planning and initiative it’s possible to tour the site in relative peace. You’ll need two to three partly shady hours to see Ephesus, as well as a bottle of water – the acres of stone act as a grill in the heat of the day, and the water sold from the kiosks at either gate is expensive.

Some history

Legends relate that Ephesus was founded by Androclus, son of King Kodrus of Athens having been advised by an oracle to settle at a place indicated by a fish and a wild boar. Androclus and his entourage arrived here to find natives roasting fish by the sea; embers from the fire set a bush ablaze, out of which charged a pig, and the city was on its way. The imported worship of Artemis melded easily with that of the indigenous Cybele, and the Ephesus of 1000 BC was built on the north slope of Mount Pion (Panayır Dağı), very close to the temple of the goddess.

Alexander the Great, on his visit in 334 BC, offered to fund the completion of the latest version of the Artemis shrine, but the city fathers tactfully demurred, saying that one deity should not support another. Following Alexander’s death his lieutenant Lysimachus moved the city to its present location – necessary because the sea had already receded considerably – and provided it with its first walls, traces of which are still visible on Panayır Dağı and Mount Koressos (Bülbül Dağı) to the south.

In subsequent centuries, Ephesus changed allegiance frequently and backed various revolts against Roman rule. Yet it never suffered for this lack of principle: during the Roman imperial period it was designated the capital of Asia and ornamented with magnificent public buildings – the ones on view today – by a succession of emperors. Ephesus’s quarter-million population was swelled substantially at times by the right of sanctuary linked to the sacred precinct of Artemis, allowing shelter to large numbers of criminals. Of a somewhat less lurid cast was the more stable, mixed population of Jews, Romans, and Egyptian and Anatolian cultists.

Despite, or perhaps because of, this, Christianity took root early and quickly at Ephesus. St John the Evangelist arrived in the mid-first century, and St Paul spent the years 51–53 AD in the city, proselytizing foremost among the Jewish community. As usual, Paul managed to foment controversy even in this cosmopolitan environment, apparently being imprisoned for some time – in a tower bearing his name near the west end of the walls – and later provoking the famous silversmiths’ riot, described in Acts 19:23–20:1.

Under the Byzantines, Ephesus was the venue for two of the councils of the Church, including one in 431 AD at which the Nestorian heresy was anathematized. However, the general tenor of the Byzantine era was one of decline, owing to the abandoning of Artemis-worship following the establishment of state Christianity, Arab raids and (worst of all) the final silting up of the harbour. The population began to siphon off to the nearby hill crowned by the tomb and church of St John, future nucleus of the town of Selçuk, and by the time the Selçuks themselves appeared the process was virtually complete.

Priene is a much less visited site than Ephesus, hence all the lizards scampering around the ruins, and its isolation gives it a lonely, faded grandeur that Ephesus lacks. Perched on a series of pine terraces graded into the south flank of Samsun Dağı, 35km south of Kuşadası, the compact but exquisite site enjoys a situation that bears comparison with that of Delphi in Greece.

Some history

Thought its original settlement was elsewhere in the Meander basin; the townspeople, following the receding shoreline – now just visible to the west – re-founded the city on its present site during the fourth century BC, just in time for Alexander to stop in and finance the cost of the principal temple of Athena. The Panionion sanctuary, cult centre of the league of Ionian cities, had always lain in Priene’s territory, just the other side of Samsun Dağı; as a result its priest was usually chosen from Priene, whose secular officials also presided over the regular meetings of the confederacy. Under Roman – and later Byzantine – rule, however, the city enjoyed little patronage from the emperors, with the result that Priene represents the best-preserved Hellenistic townscape in Ionia, without any of the usual later additions. The town was laid out by Hippodamus, an architect from nearby Miletus, who favoured a grid pattern made up of various insulae (rectangular units), each measuring roughly 42m by 35m. Within each rectangle stood four private dwellings; a public building had its own insula, sometimes two.