Sirince

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.