Turkey's most cosmopolitan Aegean city — kumru sandwiches, the Kemeraltı bazaar, and ancient Ephesus an hour away
Izmir (population 4.4 million, Turkey's third-largest city) is the most liberal, secular major city in Turkey — a port city on the Aegean coast that has traded with the Greek, Italian, and Levantine worlds for three millennia and absorbed that cosmopolitanism into its character. The waterfront Kordon promenade (2km of cafés and fish restaurants along the bay) is where the city promenades at sunset; the Kemeraltı bazaar in the city centre is one of the oldest continuously operating markets in the world, with hans (caravanserais) and a Silk Road-era infrastructure still intact beneath the moder…
The site of Izmir has been continuously inhabited since 3000 BCE — the ancient city of Smyrna (founded c.1000 BCE by Aeolian Greeks) was one of the seven cities claiming to be Homer's birthplace. Alexander the Great refounded the city in a new location in 334 BCE; the Romans made Smyrna one of the most prosperous cities in Asia Minor. The Ottoman Empire took it in 1415; its large Greek, Armenian, and Jewish populations made it one of the most multicultural ports in the eastern Mediterranean. The Great Fire of Smyrna in September 1922 — which destroyed the Greek and Armenian quarters at the en…