İzmir is amid in the Aegean province, which, of all the seven bounded regions of Turkey, enjoys the finest climate. In citizenry it is the third city-limits in Turkey. It is amid in an breadth whose arresting history has fabricated it a day-tripper centre. It lies at the centre of the a lot of important land, air and sea advice arrangement in the age-old Aegean region.
THE LEGENDARY ORIGIN OF ITS NAME
The wife of Cinyras, Baron of Cyprus, absurdly claimed that her daughter, Smyrna, was added admirable than Aphrodite herself. This so affronted the goddess that she fabricated Smyrna abatement in adulation with her own ancestor and one night Smyrna's assistant accepting fabricated the baron drunk, she climbed into his bed. When he assuredly awoke from his bashed slumber, the baron drew his brand and collection his babe from the palace, advancing her into the countryside.Just as he was about to beat her and annihilate her with his sword, Aphrodite took benevolence on the babe and angry her into a aroma tree. As it descended, the king's brand breach the myrrh-tree and ADONIS confused out. And appropriately Adonis was born.
According to acclaimed age-old travelers such as Aristides, Strabo, Pliny and Pausanias, Izmir was founded about 1450 B.C. by TANTALUS, Baron of Manisa (Spilos) to the north-east of the abreast city. There is aswell a fable to the aftereffect that it was founded by the Amazons. The one assertive affair is that Izmir is not a Greek chat and would arise to be acquired from an aboriginal language. HISTORY The excavations agitated out in 1948 by the British Archaeological Institute of Athens and, afterwards 1960, by the Turkish Historical Association beneath Prof. Ekrem Akurgal accept apparent that the aboriginal settlement, accepted as Bayrakli, can be anachronous as far aback as the Bronze Age (3500-1000 B.C.) The charcoal of the age-old band are abreast with the Troy II civilization. This adjustment was accepted as Smurna, accounting as Smyrna in age-old Greek.In the 11th aeon B.C. the littoral city-limits of Smyrna was inhabited by Ionians and Aeolians. The mudbrick aegis walls, which accept been anachronous to the 8th aeon B.C.,indicate that Izmir was already a city-limits accompaniment at that time. The Temple of Athena, anticipation to accept been congenital amid the years 725-700 B.C., is the a lot of age-old archetype of Greek architectonics in the East. Aswell to be begin actuality is the oldest case of a Greek house, with courtyard in front, and 5 apartment on two storeys. Smyrna aswell boasts the oldest archetype of a cobbled artery in Greek civilisation.
The tomb of TANTALUS (Tholos) on Mt Yamanlar is one of the oldest examples of a annular tomb. In the 8th and 7th centuries B.C. the arena came beneath the aphorism of the Phrygians and Lydians. The city, which had been destroyed during that period, was captured by the Persians in the 6th aeon and already afresh destroyed. In 333 B.C. it fell into the easily of Alexander the Great. The city-limits could no best be independent aural its old aegis walls and was refounded on Mt Pagos, now accepted as Kadifekale. By the 1st aeon B.C. alone a baby allotment of the city-limits remained on Mt Pagos, the greater allotment lying in the around of the harbour.In 288 B.C. the city-limits became accountable to the Kingdom of Pergamon and, on the afterlife of Baron Attalos III in 133 B.C. it became allotment of the Roman Empire in accordance with the agreement of Attalos' will.In the 7th aeon A.D. it was apparent to raids by the Arabs. By the 9th aeon the city-limits had become a Byzantine argosy abject with a dockyard. Beneath the Nicaean Empire (1204-1260) it was an important all-embracing port.
The aboriginal Turkish acquisition of the city-limits took abode appear the end of the 11 th aeon during the administration of Kutalmy?o?lu Süleyman Shah, and in 1426 it was congenital into Ottoman territory. The acropolis on the bank was rebuilt by Mehmed the Conqueror afterwards an advance by the Venetians in 1472 . The aboriginal bolt branch was opened in the 18th aeon and the aboriginal cardboard branch in the 19th. On 15 May 1919 the activity of the city-limits by the Greeks sparked off the Turkish civic attempt for Independence. On its liberation in 1922 three-quarters of the city-limits was destroyed by fire. The industrialisation and urbanisation that characterised the years afterward the announcement of the Republic destroyed the admirable mural that the city-limits had aforetime possessed.
Today, the old city-limits slumbers in abeyance in a growing and rapidly alteration Izmir, but those absolutely absorbed can still acquisition old houses with bay windows hidden abroad in attenuated streets, old Ottoman hans and arresting Levantine mansions, as able-bodied as old mosques, synagogues and churches. At the alpha of the 20th aeon Izmir was a centre of business and ball allusive Istanbul and Salonica in the bureaucracy of Ottoman cities and acclaimed for its raisins and seedless grapes, its almonds, its horsedrawn phaetons, its bounce festival, its "gold drop'' Eau de Cologne and nargiles or water-pipes. The citizenry of 200,000 at the about-face of the aeon has now developed to 3 million. All types of cottons and textiles, calm with agronomical aftermath such as tobacco, grapes, figs, olives and olive oil are exported from Izmir to all four corners of the world. Today the city-limits retains its accent as the better consign harbour in Turkey.
