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Wednesday, November 18, 2015
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Monday, November 9, 2015
The best of the west
The best of the west
Pamukkale (Photo: Pat Yale)
The bad news is
that recent events on the political front mean that tourism to the
eastern parts of Turkey is likely to take a significant hit, at least in
the short term. The good news is, however, that Turkey is a vast
country, which means that there are more than enough alternative
destinations for those in search of something a little less mainstream
than a beach holiday. It has long been my opinion that Western Anatolia
is one of the least appreciated parts of the country when it comes to
foreign visitors. Now could be the time when it comes into its own.
Here are a few suggestions of where to visit in Western Anatolia, starting with the blockbuster destinations of Pamukkale-Hierapolis and Afrodisias that already receive their fair share of visitors and moving on to places such as Afyon and Gölhisar, which are waiting in the wings.
Why? Rare combination of man-made and natural beauty
Pamukkale is the site that launched a thousand dog-eared posters of tourists frolicking in the turquoise waters of the travertines that cascade down a hillside in front of the sprawling ruins of ancient Hierapolis, the place where St. Philip is believed to have been buried. With more than enough to occupy a day of anyone's time, Pamukkale is already a fixture on many tourists' itineraries. The sleepy little village at the foot of the travertines could do with more staying visitors, though, and those who do linger will find that there are plenty of other sites to see in the surrounding area including the increasingly impressive ruins of ancient Laodikya, site of one of the Seven Churches of the Revelation; and the beautiful old painted mosque at Akköy, within walking distance of Pamukkale village.
Why? Magnificent Greco-Roman archaeological site good enough to rival Ephesus
Famously publicized by photographer Ara Güler, Afrodisias, the ruins of the city of the Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite, once stood silent and forgotten around the village of Eski Geyre. Today some of the old buildings of Eski Geyre survive to serve as a café and exhibition center, but you'll probably be too busy racing out to the Classical ruins to notice them. Afrodisias has all the typical features of a Greco-Roman site (Theater? Tick. Odeon? Tick. Huge temple? Tick), although perhaps the most striking survivor is the glorious stadium, one of the best preserved in the world. In the end, though, the real winner these days is the restored Sebasteion, a temple to the Roman emperor as deity, the splendid carvings from which are now housed in a purpose-built gallery that shows them off to perfection.
Why? Ceramics with a backdrop of fine Ottoman housing
Once known almost exclusively as a place to come to eyeball the sort of ceramics that took over from İznikware in the 18th century, Kütahya is also a great place to come to explore a partially restored Ottoman townscape and stay in Ottoman style at the Ispartılar Konağı (tel: 0274-216 1975) in the renovated Germiyan quarter. It's also the best base for making a side trip out to the remains of ancient Aizanoi, appealingly scattered around the village of Çavdarhisar.
Why? Drama of a hilltop castle combined with the pleasures of an old Ottoman townscape
Modern Afyon labors under the weight of its full name, which is Afyonkarahisar, a moniker that commemorates both the opium poppies (afyon) that grow hereabouts and the black castle (kara hisar) that looms above the town, daring visitors to make the ascent. Afyon's new archeological museum is way out of the center unlike its other great treasure, an Ulu Cami that belongs to a group of so-called “forest mosques,” their ceilings supported by a forest of columns carved from tree trunks. With Eskişehir, Afyon also makes a great base for exploring the newly waymarked Frig Yolu (Phrygian Way), centered on the remains of a great Phrygian temple at Midasşehri. Much of the lovely old Ottoman housing survives, some of it restored, some not. Stay at the lovely Şehitoğlu Konağı (tel: 0272-214 1313) to get the full effect.
Why? Remains of ancient Lydian town where coins were first minted
Most easily visited on a day trip from İzmir, Sardis is nonetheless on the edge of Western Anatolia and easy to fit in if you're heading across country from Denizli. The remains of the ancient mint are pretty unmemorable, unlike the spectacular mosaic floors of what was once one of Anatolia's largest synagogues and the reconstructed Court of the Hall of the Imperial Cult. A short walk away from these obvious ruins lie the remains of the Temple of Artemis, one of the four largest temples in ancient Asia Minor and beautifully sited against a mountain backdrop.
Why? Glorious lakeside settings. Stopping point on waymarked St. Paul's Trail
If it's lakeside scenery you're after, then you should head straight for Eğirdır where you can either stay on the mainland in the shadow of a ruined castle or out on an island linked to it by a causeway where the strong breezes will act as a constant reminder that you're sitting in the middle of a lake. Surprisingly, there's little in the way of watersports development, not even in the form of boat trips out onto the lake. For that, you should head for equally lovely Beyşehir, where the ruins of a Selçuk summer palace sit right beside the water. Finally, you could stay in Burdur, where the lake is a couple of kilometers out of the town center, but where there's a great museum and a couple of lovely restored Ottoman houses open to the public.
Why? Newly excavated archaeological site you may well have to yourself
If you've popped your head into Burdur Museum, you will have seen some fine carvings depicting gladiators that were found south of town at the remote site of Cibyra, uphill from Gölhisar. Barely ready for visitors, the site nonetheless boasts another very impressive stadium as wall as a theater and bouleterion (council house) that are almost intact. An impressive mosaic showing the head of Medusa may or may not be visible when you visit.
Why? Nasrettin Hoca links make this a fun place to bring children
The small town of Akşehir is completely off the radar when it comes to foreign visitors, and yet it is a surprisingly pleasant place with several lovely Selçuk monuments. But what makes Akşehir refreshingly different from many other similar inland towns is that it is believed to be the last resting place of Middle Eastern funnyman Nasrettin Hoca, a fact enthusiastically celebrated in the local park with reproductions of some of his best-known stories dotted about.
Why? Archeological site associated with St. Paul
Compared to Afrodisias and Hierapolis, Antioch in Psidia is very much an also-ran tourist attraction with few of the surviving ruins especially striking to the non-specialist visitor. On the other hand, the site has strong associations with St. Paul, who is believed to have visited on three out of four of his trans-Anatolian missionary journeys and for some people this will give it a particular poignancy. Yalvaç is the small town just up the road from the site. Here, in the Çınaraltı Meydanı, you'll find one of those lovely Turkish corners where a group of teashops are grouped together in the shade of a huge and ancient plane tree, in this case rumored to be more than 800 years old.
Why? To appreciate what can be done with a so-so town with a bit of imagination
Not so long ago the large town of Eskişehir was not a place where anyone wanted to linger unless they were tempted to sample its thermal baths. Then came an imaginative administration led by Yılmaz Büyükerşen, and the next thing anyone knew there was a flashy new tram, gondolas and Amsterdam canal boats on the river, inviting public parks and the restored Odunpazarı district where Ottoman houses grouped around the attractive 16th-century Kurşunlu Cami had been restored to serve as cafes and restaurants. For anyone interested in urban regeneration projects Eskişehir is Turkey's most unexpected must-see destination.
Here are a few suggestions of where to visit in Western Anatolia, starting with the blockbuster destinations of Pamukkale-Hierapolis and Afrodisias that already receive their fair share of visitors and moving on to places such as Afyon and Gölhisar, which are waiting in the wings.
Pamukkale-Hierapolis
Why? Rare combination of man-made and natural beauty
Pamukkale is the site that launched a thousand dog-eared posters of tourists frolicking in the turquoise waters of the travertines that cascade down a hillside in front of the sprawling ruins of ancient Hierapolis, the place where St. Philip is believed to have been buried. With more than enough to occupy a day of anyone's time, Pamukkale is already a fixture on many tourists' itineraries. The sleepy little village at the foot of the travertines could do with more staying visitors, though, and those who do linger will find that there are plenty of other sites to see in the surrounding area including the increasingly impressive ruins of ancient Laodikya, site of one of the Seven Churches of the Revelation; and the beautiful old painted mosque at Akköy, within walking distance of Pamukkale village.
Afrodisias
Why? Magnificent Greco-Roman archaeological site good enough to rival Ephesus
Famously publicized by photographer Ara Güler, Afrodisias, the ruins of the city of the Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite, once stood silent and forgotten around the village of Eski Geyre. Today some of the old buildings of Eski Geyre survive to serve as a café and exhibition center, but you'll probably be too busy racing out to the Classical ruins to notice them. Afrodisias has all the typical features of a Greco-Roman site (Theater? Tick. Odeon? Tick. Huge temple? Tick), although perhaps the most striking survivor is the glorious stadium, one of the best preserved in the world. In the end, though, the real winner these days is the restored Sebasteion, a temple to the Roman emperor as deity, the splendid carvings from which are now housed in a purpose-built gallery that shows them off to perfection.
Kütahya
Why? Ceramics with a backdrop of fine Ottoman housing
Once known almost exclusively as a place to come to eyeball the sort of ceramics that took over from İznikware in the 18th century, Kütahya is also a great place to come to explore a partially restored Ottoman townscape and stay in Ottoman style at the Ispartılar Konağı (tel: 0274-216 1975) in the renovated Germiyan quarter. It's also the best base for making a side trip out to the remains of ancient Aizanoi, appealingly scattered around the village of Çavdarhisar.
Afyon
Why? Drama of a hilltop castle combined with the pleasures of an old Ottoman townscape
Modern Afyon labors under the weight of its full name, which is Afyonkarahisar, a moniker that commemorates both the opium poppies (afyon) that grow hereabouts and the black castle (kara hisar) that looms above the town, daring visitors to make the ascent. Afyon's new archeological museum is way out of the center unlike its other great treasure, an Ulu Cami that belongs to a group of so-called “forest mosques,” their ceilings supported by a forest of columns carved from tree trunks. With Eskişehir, Afyon also makes a great base for exploring the newly waymarked Frig Yolu (Phrygian Way), centered on the remains of a great Phrygian temple at Midasşehri. Much of the lovely old Ottoman housing survives, some of it restored, some not. Stay at the lovely Şehitoğlu Konağı (tel: 0272-214 1313) to get the full effect.
Sardis
Why? Remains of ancient Lydian town where coins were first minted
Most easily visited on a day trip from İzmir, Sardis is nonetheless on the edge of Western Anatolia and easy to fit in if you're heading across country from Denizli. The remains of the ancient mint are pretty unmemorable, unlike the spectacular mosaic floors of what was once one of Anatolia's largest synagogues and the reconstructed Court of the Hall of the Imperial Cult. A short walk away from these obvious ruins lie the remains of the Temple of Artemis, one of the four largest temples in ancient Asia Minor and beautifully sited against a mountain backdrop.
Turkish Lake District
Why? Glorious lakeside settings. Stopping point on waymarked St. Paul's Trail
If it's lakeside scenery you're after, then you should head straight for Eğirdır where you can either stay on the mainland in the shadow of a ruined castle or out on an island linked to it by a causeway where the strong breezes will act as a constant reminder that you're sitting in the middle of a lake. Surprisingly, there's little in the way of watersports development, not even in the form of boat trips out onto the lake. For that, you should head for equally lovely Beyşehir, where the ruins of a Selçuk summer palace sit right beside the water. Finally, you could stay in Burdur, where the lake is a couple of kilometers out of the town center, but where there's a great museum and a couple of lovely restored Ottoman houses open to the public.
Gölhisar (Cibyra)
Why? Newly excavated archaeological site you may well have to yourself
If you've popped your head into Burdur Museum, you will have seen some fine carvings depicting gladiators that were found south of town at the remote site of Cibyra, uphill from Gölhisar. Barely ready for visitors, the site nonetheless boasts another very impressive stadium as wall as a theater and bouleterion (council house) that are almost intact. An impressive mosaic showing the head of Medusa may or may not be visible when you visit.
Akşehir
Why? Nasrettin Hoca links make this a fun place to bring children
The small town of Akşehir is completely off the radar when it comes to foreign visitors, and yet it is a surprisingly pleasant place with several lovely Selçuk monuments. But what makes Akşehir refreshingly different from many other similar inland towns is that it is believed to be the last resting place of Middle Eastern funnyman Nasrettin Hoca, a fact enthusiastically celebrated in the local park with reproductions of some of his best-known stories dotted about.
Yalvaç and Antioch in Psidia
Why? Archeological site associated with St. Paul
Compared to Afrodisias and Hierapolis, Antioch in Psidia is very much an also-ran tourist attraction with few of the surviving ruins especially striking to the non-specialist visitor. On the other hand, the site has strong associations with St. Paul, who is believed to have visited on three out of four of his trans-Anatolian missionary journeys and for some people this will give it a particular poignancy. Yalvaç is the small town just up the road from the site. Here, in the Çınaraltı Meydanı, you'll find one of those lovely Turkish corners where a group of teashops are grouped together in the shade of a huge and ancient plane tree, in this case rumored to be more than 800 years old.
Eskişehir
Why? To appreciate what can be done with a so-so town with a bit of imagination
Not so long ago the large town of Eskişehir was not a place where anyone wanted to linger unless they were tempted to sample its thermal baths. Then came an imaginative administration led by Yılmaz Büyükerşen, and the next thing anyone knew there was a flashy new tram, gondolas and Amsterdam canal boats on the river, inviting public parks and the restored Odunpazarı district where Ottoman houses grouped around the attractive 16th-century Kurşunlu Cami had been restored to serve as cafes and restaurants. For anyone interested in urban regeneration projects Eskişehir is Turkey's most unexpected must-see destination.
Source: http://www.todayszaman.com/travel_the-best-of-the-west_361199.html
Monday, October 26, 2015
The taste of Tarsus
The taste of Tarsus
Old Tarsus (Photo: Pat Yale)
On a muggy, hot summer day I staggered up to a juice bar in the eastern Mediterranean city of tarsus.
My fringe was plastered to my forehead. My glasses were smeared with
sweat. Beads of perspiration were dripping off my chin onto my T-shirt.
“Very hot,” I said apologetically to the juice seller.
“Yes, humid,” he said, gently wiping away a single drop of sweat adorning his own forehead.
For those not brought up in this part of the world, the climate all along Turkey's south coast can be pretty punishing, but the wet heat concentrates its worst on the corner where the coastline makes its abrupt downward turn into Hatay. The good thing is that this ensures lush Levantine vegetation of palms, fig trees and banana plants. The bad thing is that it can make it hard to make oneself stir far from a hotel room with its air conditioning unit turned up high.
At the juice bar I downed a mixed fruit juice followed in short order by a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. But at that time of year I could easily have been more adventurous, because this is when the prickly pear bushes come into fruit and glasses of prickly pear juice (hint inciri suyu) are a common sight in Tarsus. Almost as common are bowls of yayla karsambaç, the Tarsus take on a slushie, with fruit juice poured over crushed ice to help you cool down.
Finally, one can always take a deep breath and order a glass of şalgam, the so-called “turnip juice” that is claimed for itself by nearby Adana but spills over in large quantities to Tarsus too. Şalgam is actually made from carrots that have been added to fermented bulgur with a dose of salt. True aficionados drink it in between crunching on sticks of carrot called tane. It's very much an acquired taste.
Mention Tarsus to most people and the first thing that will come to their mind is St. Paul, the Tarsus-born Saul who underwent a religious experience on the road to Damascus and not only converted to Christianity and changed his name but also became one of the most ardent advocates for his new religion. A few people, after scratching their heads, will recall that Tarsus also had something to do with Queen Cleopatra of Egypt, who was summoned to the city in 41 BC to meet Marc Anthony, the Roman leader of the eastern part of what was then still a rambling republic. The queen is said to have sailed up the Cyndus river to meet him in a perfumed barge full of flowers. Needless to say, he promptly fell in love with her and forgot all about politics. Today, a poorly restored gate from the old city wall is named after the queen, although it can't have been standing when she visited.
Finally, a few sharper Turks will remember a link with the Şahmeran, a Mesopotamian fertility symbol with the body of a snake and the head of a human. These days the Şahmeran tends to be most closely associated with Mardin, where craftsmen in the bazaar turn out beautiful images of a creature that appears to be female under glass. The Tarsus Şahmeran, however, was firmly male, and a bit of an unreconstructed, voyeuristic male at that, since a local story records him climbing onto the roof of the Roman bathhouse to spy on the daughter of the king of Tarsus as she bathed. Unluckily for him, he lost his footing and fell into the arms of her waiting bodyguards who promptly put him to death. A statue of the Şahmeran looking like a many-headed cobra presides over a road junction in the center of town.
What few people know, however, is that on the quiet, Tarsus is almost as intriguing a place for people interested in food as Antakya further along the coast. This is mainly a result of its complex crossroads position, lost in the Mersin-Adana sprawl yet near enough to Hatay to have borrowed some of its trendy culinary clothing.
Take hummus, for example. This crushed chickpea and tahini dish is a Middle Eastern favorite that frequently crops up in Antakya by reason of its geographical proximity to Syria. Its popularity in Tarsus is less easy to understand, and does not, as in Kilis, have anything to do with the recent influx of refugees. But the hummus of Tarsus is hummus with a novel twist, because here you can eat it warmed through, dribbled with olive oil and dotted with chickpeas and slithers of pastırma (pastırmalı humus). It's absolutely delicious and best sampled at the award-winning Kervan Humus Salonu, tucked away on a side street.
The other dish that Tarsus seems to have borrowed from its eastern neighbors is the Gaziantep and Kilis favorite lahmacun, but here too it puts its own spin on the familiar serving of paper-thin bread spread with a paste of ground meat and vegetables. In Tarsus they take their lahmacun in bite-sized portions on sale by the hundred in the town's many bakeries. Fresh from the oven and piping hot, they're incredibly moreish.
If şalgam was Adana's gift to Tarsus, then tantuni was Mersin's. Tantuni is a dish of stir-fried meat or chicken that is served in the same sort of soft-bread dürüm wrap as a döner kebab, except that this bread has been used to mop up the meat juices before being wrapped round the contents. The tantuni on offer in Tarsus may not quite match up to the version on sale in Mersin itself, but it certainly makes a good alternative to the more familiar döner.
When it comes to dessert, Tarsus lays claim to one sweet entirely of its own making, and that is cezerye, a gelatinous confection that, like şalgam, has carrot as its base ingredient but now with the addition of crushed hazelnuts or pistachios, honey, sugar and a mixture of different spices all sprinkled with grated coconut, then sliced into squares. You'll see it rising up in conical pyramids in the windows of every other sweetshop in town.
Dinner and cezerye dessert over, Tarsuslus, like Turks all over the country, adjourn to a teahouse to let their meal digest in the relative cool of evening over glass after glass of tea. Until recently the best and most obvious place to take one's tea was the pedestrianized Atatürk Bulvarı Yarenlik Alanı, which sits near an impressive stretch of exposed Roman road. As its name made plain, this used to be a place where one was encouraged to sit down for a friendly chat with others at one of a number of small cafes. Unfortunately these have now vanished, their place taken only by a string of park benches interspersed with busts of every famous or half-famous person ever to have graced Tarsus with their presence. In their absence you'll have to settle for an ordinary teahouse in a rather male-dominated town or (whisper it) head up to the Tarsu shopping mall for a drink in a branch of a cheerier coffeehouse chain.
WHERE TO STAY
Tarsus is low on decent places to stay, so you might want to stay overnight in Mersin, where there are lots of hotels near the bus terminal, or in Adana and visit on a day trip.
Hotel Bosnalı, Adana. Tel: 0322-359 8000
Hotel Mercan, Adana. Tel: 0322-351 2603
Konak Efsus, Tarsus. Tel: 0324-614 0807
Şelale Hotel, Tarsus. Tel: 0324-614 0600
Taşköprü Hotel, Adana. Tel: 0322-359 1144
HOW TO GET HERE
The nearest airport is in Adana, which is also served, like Mersin, by most big bus companies. Frequent minibuses connect Adana and Mersin with Tarsus. Driving, you'll need to keep your eyes peeled for the turn-off to Tarsus marked by a Kültür Park housing the Nusret minelayer that played a big part in the events at Gallipoli in 1915 -- it's easy to miss amid the heavy traffic.
“Very hot,” I said apologetically to the juice seller.
“Yes, humid,” he said, gently wiping away a single drop of sweat adorning his own forehead.
For those not brought up in this part of the world, the climate all along Turkey's south coast can be pretty punishing, but the wet heat concentrates its worst on the corner where the coastline makes its abrupt downward turn into Hatay. The good thing is that this ensures lush Levantine vegetation of palms, fig trees and banana plants. The bad thing is that it can make it hard to make oneself stir far from a hotel room with its air conditioning unit turned up high.
At the juice bar I downed a mixed fruit juice followed in short order by a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. But at that time of year I could easily have been more adventurous, because this is when the prickly pear bushes come into fruit and glasses of prickly pear juice (hint inciri suyu) are a common sight in Tarsus. Almost as common are bowls of yayla karsambaç, the Tarsus take on a slushie, with fruit juice poured over crushed ice to help you cool down.
Şalgam: an acquired taste
Finally, one can always take a deep breath and order a glass of şalgam, the so-called “turnip juice” that is claimed for itself by nearby Adana but spills over in large quantities to Tarsus too. Şalgam is actually made from carrots that have been added to fermented bulgur with a dose of salt. True aficionados drink it in between crunching on sticks of carrot called tane. It's very much an acquired taste.
Mention Tarsus to most people and the first thing that will come to their mind is St. Paul, the Tarsus-born Saul who underwent a religious experience on the road to Damascus and not only converted to Christianity and changed his name but also became one of the most ardent advocates for his new religion. A few people, after scratching their heads, will recall that Tarsus also had something to do with Queen Cleopatra of Egypt, who was summoned to the city in 41 BC to meet Marc Anthony, the Roman leader of the eastern part of what was then still a rambling republic. The queen is said to have sailed up the Cyndus river to meet him in a perfumed barge full of flowers. Needless to say, he promptly fell in love with her and forgot all about politics. Today, a poorly restored gate from the old city wall is named after the queen, although it can't have been standing when she visited.
Finally, a few sharper Turks will remember a link with the Şahmeran, a Mesopotamian fertility symbol with the body of a snake and the head of a human. These days the Şahmeran tends to be most closely associated with Mardin, where craftsmen in the bazaar turn out beautiful images of a creature that appears to be female under glass. The Tarsus Şahmeran, however, was firmly male, and a bit of an unreconstructed, voyeuristic male at that, since a local story records him climbing onto the roof of the Roman bathhouse to spy on the daughter of the king of Tarsus as she bathed. Unluckily for him, he lost his footing and fell into the arms of her waiting bodyguards who promptly put him to death. A statue of the Şahmeran looking like a many-headed cobra presides over a road junction in the center of town.
What few people know, however, is that on the quiet, Tarsus is almost as intriguing a place for people interested in food as Antakya further along the coast. This is mainly a result of its complex crossroads position, lost in the Mersin-Adana sprawl yet near enough to Hatay to have borrowed some of its trendy culinary clothing.
Take hummus, for example. This crushed chickpea and tahini dish is a Middle Eastern favorite that frequently crops up in Antakya by reason of its geographical proximity to Syria. Its popularity in Tarsus is less easy to understand, and does not, as in Kilis, have anything to do with the recent influx of refugees. But the hummus of Tarsus is hummus with a novel twist, because here you can eat it warmed through, dribbled with olive oil and dotted with chickpeas and slithers of pastırma (pastırmalı humus). It's absolutely delicious and best sampled at the award-winning Kervan Humus Salonu, tucked away on a side street.
The other dish that Tarsus seems to have borrowed from its eastern neighbors is the Gaziantep and Kilis favorite lahmacun, but here too it puts its own spin on the familiar serving of paper-thin bread spread with a paste of ground meat and vegetables. In Tarsus they take their lahmacun in bite-sized portions on sale by the hundred in the town's many bakeries. Fresh from the oven and piping hot, they're incredibly moreish.
Tasty tantuni
If şalgam was Adana's gift to Tarsus, then tantuni was Mersin's. Tantuni is a dish of stir-fried meat or chicken that is served in the same sort of soft-bread dürüm wrap as a döner kebab, except that this bread has been used to mop up the meat juices before being wrapped round the contents. The tantuni on offer in Tarsus may not quite match up to the version on sale in Mersin itself, but it certainly makes a good alternative to the more familiar döner.
When it comes to dessert, Tarsus lays claim to one sweet entirely of its own making, and that is cezerye, a gelatinous confection that, like şalgam, has carrot as its base ingredient but now with the addition of crushed hazelnuts or pistachios, honey, sugar and a mixture of different spices all sprinkled with grated coconut, then sliced into squares. You'll see it rising up in conical pyramids in the windows of every other sweetshop in town.
Dinner and cezerye dessert over, Tarsuslus, like Turks all over the country, adjourn to a teahouse to let their meal digest in the relative cool of evening over glass after glass of tea. Until recently the best and most obvious place to take one's tea was the pedestrianized Atatürk Bulvarı Yarenlik Alanı, which sits near an impressive stretch of exposed Roman road. As its name made plain, this used to be a place where one was encouraged to sit down for a friendly chat with others at one of a number of small cafes. Unfortunately these have now vanished, their place taken only by a string of park benches interspersed with busts of every famous or half-famous person ever to have graced Tarsus with their presence. In their absence you'll have to settle for an ordinary teahouse in a rather male-dominated town or (whisper it) head up to the Tarsu shopping mall for a drink in a branch of a cheerier coffeehouse chain.
WHERE TO STAY
Tarsus is low on decent places to stay, so you might want to stay overnight in Mersin, where there are lots of hotels near the bus terminal, or in Adana and visit on a day trip.
Hotel Bosnalı, Adana. Tel: 0322-359 8000
Hotel Mercan, Adana. Tel: 0322-351 2603
Konak Efsus, Tarsus. Tel: 0324-614 0807
Şelale Hotel, Tarsus. Tel: 0324-614 0600
Taşköprü Hotel, Adana. Tel: 0322-359 1144
HOW TO GET HERE
The nearest airport is in Adana, which is also served, like Mersin, by most big bus companies. Frequent minibuses connect Adana and Mersin with Tarsus. Driving, you'll need to keep your eyes peeled for the turn-off to Tarsus marked by a Kültür Park housing the Nusret minelayer that played a big part in the events at Gallipoli in 1915 -- it's easy to miss amid the heavy traffic.
Source: http://www.todayszaman.com/travel_the-taste-of-tarsus_362490.html
Monday, October 12, 2015
DAY TRIPPING İZMİR III
DAY TRIPPING İZMİR III
Urla Harbor (Photo: Pat Yale)
The sheer size of İzmir
means that it serves as something of an obstacle to people traveling
along the Aegean coast. Routes that bypass the conurbation usually whip
travelers round it on the eastern side. That leaves the small resorts on
the Çeşme and Karaburun peninsulas to the west more or less cut off
from passing traffic.
Still, if you're spending a few days in İzmir, you might want to head out in this direction, especially now that the western bus terminal at Üçkuyular is finally accessible by metro.
Looking at a map, the biggest town west of İzmir is Çeşme (which is actually much smaller than you might expect). Çeşme can be reached by hourly bus from the main İzmir bus station as well as from Üçkuyular, but most of the other settlements are only served by buses from Üçkuyular.
Here, then, are the last places I recommend visiting in the İzmir area.
Çeşme is dominated by a vast Genoese castle that now serves as the local museum and offers spectacular sea views from its ramparts. In front of it stands a somewhat bizarre statue of Cezayirli Gazi Hasan Paşa (1714-90) with his pet lion. Other than that, Çeşme has little in the way of specific tourist attractions, although it's worth popping your head into what was originally the Church of Hagios Haralambos on the main road down to the harbor. Now used as a cultural center, it can usually be relied on to have something going on inside that will enable you to wander in and admire the sheer size and decoration of one of Turkey's many late 19th-century churches.
Many people come to Çeşme to catch the ferry to the Greek island of Chios, easily visitable on a day trip. If you plan on staying overnight, it's worth knowing that the vast Kanuni Kervansaray Historic Hotel (tel: 0232-712 0630), created out of a 16th-century caravanserai, is only 10 minutes' walk from the ferry. Prices drop dramatically off-season.
The Çeşme eating scene is pretty mediocre, although the coming of a marina has stirred a few Italian restaurants and café-bars into the mix. One option is to head out to Dalyan (not to be confused with the larger Dalyan near Fethiye), where fish restaurant after fish restaurant hugs the banks of a stream running down to the sea.
From Çeşme it's easy to bus-hop your way round the local beaches. The nearest is Boyalık, on the outskirts of Çeşme itself, but you can also catch a bus to the wilder sands around Altınkum. Alternatively, you can head for Ilıca, where a wide swathe of sand is overlooked by an enormous Sheraton hotel. This is an unexpectedly upscale spa resort with some fine residential housing just inland. If you can afford to stay at the Nars Ilıca Hotel (tel: 0232-729 0001), you're unlikely to regret it.
These days it's not so much Çeşme as Alaçatı that draws people west from İzmir. Let's be frank -- Alaçatı may be lovely, but it's also unabashedly expensive, so even if you would like to stay, a day trip may be all that you can afford. Once a small virtually abandoned Ottoman Greek settlement, Alaçatı has a picture-postcard beauty, with lovely stone houses, each with a jutting wooden cumba (bay window), fanning out from a central square dominated by a vast church, now turned into a mosque. Since 2001, most of these houses have been snapped up and turned into boutique hotels, gourmet restaurants and stylish shops that appeal particularly to İstanbullus in search of a sea break but reluctant to travel as far as Bodrum. In July and August, the narrow streets are so crammed with bodies that it's hard to appreciate the architecture. Travel out of season, however, and you will readily understand what it was that attracted the first-comers to this then-isolated corner of the country.
Not all of Alaçatı has been developed even now. The best thing to do is wander into the back street behind the church-mosque where you'll find an inviting mix of dereliction and gentrification with lots of antique shops and cafes thrown in.
Even without its man-made beauty, Alaçatı has another claim to fame, which is the nearby beach, a favorite with the windsurfing community. As you ride out there on the bus you'll pass the rather odd Port Alaçatı Marina development, an attempt to create something “Venetian” on erstwhile undeveloped land.
The main highway from İzmir to Çeşme slices across the Çeşme Peninsula, making movement between the other settlements in the area difficult. If you'd like to visit Urla, site of the ancient Greek settlement of Clazomenae, you're best off taking a bus directly from Üçkuyular. Once there you'll find an extremely pretty harbor dominated by the restored Customs Office that houses a nice café. Scant remains of Clazomenae can be seen on and around the hill above the harbor; closer to it you'll see the erstwhile home of the Greek poet Yorgo Seferis (1900-71), now a small hotel.
Urla keeps one more trick up its sleeve, which is the old town about one kilometer inland. Full of Alaçatı-style houses on a grander scale, some of them now restored, it is also home to a couple of pleasant mosques, including one with a lovely painted şadırvan (ablutions fountain) of a type more common around Amasya.
On a map, the Karaburun Peninsula, jutting into the sea northwest of İzmir, looks as if it should be remote and wildly beautiful. Unfortunately, the usual concrete blight has been allowed to take hold, rendering the port towns of Mordoğan and Karaburun (both with summer ferries to Eski Foça) less inviting than you might have hoped. The prettiest village on the peninsula is Ildır, where attractive stone houses stand directly over some of the remains of ancient Greek Erythrae. Up above the village there are more ruins, not dramatic in themselves but leading inexorably upwards to a headland offering spectacular sea views. For the time being, tourism here is very low-key, although a couple of hotels and smart cafes have already opened, no doubt hoping to emulate the success of Alaçatı.
Southwest of İzmir, buses from Üçkuyular run to Seferihisar, a town that has signed up to the Slow City movement and boasts a large statue of three intertwined snails accordingly. A city museum is in the planning. Until it opens, you are more likely to want to head straight to the harbor at Sığacık, something made considerably less simple by the opening of a new out-of-town bus station where you must exit the İzmir bus, wait for another to run you into town, then board a third to get to Sığacık.
Once you get there, however, you will find a quaint little settlement hunkered down behind stone walls, probably dating back to the Genoese days of the late Middle Ages. Inside the walls there's a small mosque complete with even smaller medrese and ruinous hamam. Otherwise, most of the housing here used to be pretty indifferent in design. A recent initiative has seen all the accumulated concrete and old paint stripped back so that the houses can be repainted in pastel colors. Once finished they should look a great deal more alluring.
From Sığacık, frequent buses ferry people out to the windsurfing beach at Akkum. If you'd like to visit the ruins of ancient Teos you will need to take a taxi either from Akkum or from Sığacık itself. Although Teos is thought to have been home to the largest temple to Dionysius in the ancient world, the surviving remains are fairly insubstantial; a new museum being built on the site should soon make a visit more worthwhile. Regardless, it sits in a bucolic setting amid ancient olive trees, a world away from the bustle of big-city İzmir.
Still, if you're spending a few days in İzmir, you might want to head out in this direction, especially now that the western bus terminal at Üçkuyular is finally accessible by metro.
Looking at a map, the biggest town west of İzmir is Çeşme (which is actually much smaller than you might expect). Çeşme can be reached by hourly bus from the main İzmir bus station as well as from Üçkuyular, but most of the other settlements are only served by buses from Üçkuyular.
Here, then, are the last places I recommend visiting in the İzmir area.
Çeşme and around
Çeşme is dominated by a vast Genoese castle that now serves as the local museum and offers spectacular sea views from its ramparts. In front of it stands a somewhat bizarre statue of Cezayirli Gazi Hasan Paşa (1714-90) with his pet lion. Other than that, Çeşme has little in the way of specific tourist attractions, although it's worth popping your head into what was originally the Church of Hagios Haralambos on the main road down to the harbor. Now used as a cultural center, it can usually be relied on to have something going on inside that will enable you to wander in and admire the sheer size and decoration of one of Turkey's many late 19th-century churches.
Many people come to Çeşme to catch the ferry to the Greek island of Chios, easily visitable on a day trip. If you plan on staying overnight, it's worth knowing that the vast Kanuni Kervansaray Historic Hotel (tel: 0232-712 0630), created out of a 16th-century caravanserai, is only 10 minutes' walk from the ferry. Prices drop dramatically off-season.
The Çeşme eating scene is pretty mediocre, although the coming of a marina has stirred a few Italian restaurants and café-bars into the mix. One option is to head out to Dalyan (not to be confused with the larger Dalyan near Fethiye), where fish restaurant after fish restaurant hugs the banks of a stream running down to the sea.
From Çeşme it's easy to bus-hop your way round the local beaches. The nearest is Boyalık, on the outskirts of Çeşme itself, but you can also catch a bus to the wilder sands around Altınkum. Alternatively, you can head for Ilıca, where a wide swathe of sand is overlooked by an enormous Sheraton hotel. This is an unexpectedly upscale spa resort with some fine residential housing just inland. If you can afford to stay at the Nars Ilıca Hotel (tel: 0232-729 0001), you're unlikely to regret it.
Alaçatı
These days it's not so much Çeşme as Alaçatı that draws people west from İzmir. Let's be frank -- Alaçatı may be lovely, but it's also unabashedly expensive, so even if you would like to stay, a day trip may be all that you can afford. Once a small virtually abandoned Ottoman Greek settlement, Alaçatı has a picture-postcard beauty, with lovely stone houses, each with a jutting wooden cumba (bay window), fanning out from a central square dominated by a vast church, now turned into a mosque. Since 2001, most of these houses have been snapped up and turned into boutique hotels, gourmet restaurants and stylish shops that appeal particularly to İstanbullus in search of a sea break but reluctant to travel as far as Bodrum. In July and August, the narrow streets are so crammed with bodies that it's hard to appreciate the architecture. Travel out of season, however, and you will readily understand what it was that attracted the first-comers to this then-isolated corner of the country.
Not all of Alaçatı has been developed even now. The best thing to do is wander into the back street behind the church-mosque where you'll find an inviting mix of dereliction and gentrification with lots of antique shops and cafes thrown in.
Even without its man-made beauty, Alaçatı has another claim to fame, which is the nearby beach, a favorite with the windsurfing community. As you ride out there on the bus you'll pass the rather odd Port Alaçatı Marina development, an attempt to create something “Venetian” on erstwhile undeveloped land.
Urla
The main highway from İzmir to Çeşme slices across the Çeşme Peninsula, making movement between the other settlements in the area difficult. If you'd like to visit Urla, site of the ancient Greek settlement of Clazomenae, you're best off taking a bus directly from Üçkuyular. Once there you'll find an extremely pretty harbor dominated by the restored Customs Office that houses a nice café. Scant remains of Clazomenae can be seen on and around the hill above the harbor; closer to it you'll see the erstwhile home of the Greek poet Yorgo Seferis (1900-71), now a small hotel.
Urla keeps one more trick up its sleeve, which is the old town about one kilometer inland. Full of Alaçatı-style houses on a grander scale, some of them now restored, it is also home to a couple of pleasant mosques, including one with a lovely painted şadırvan (ablutions fountain) of a type more common around Amasya.
Karaburun Peninsula
On a map, the Karaburun Peninsula, jutting into the sea northwest of İzmir, looks as if it should be remote and wildly beautiful. Unfortunately, the usual concrete blight has been allowed to take hold, rendering the port towns of Mordoğan and Karaburun (both with summer ferries to Eski Foça) less inviting than you might have hoped. The prettiest village on the peninsula is Ildır, where attractive stone houses stand directly over some of the remains of ancient Greek Erythrae. Up above the village there are more ruins, not dramatic in themselves but leading inexorably upwards to a headland offering spectacular sea views. For the time being, tourism here is very low-key, although a couple of hotels and smart cafes have already opened, no doubt hoping to emulate the success of Alaçatı.
Sığacık, Teos and Akkum
Southwest of İzmir, buses from Üçkuyular run to Seferihisar, a town that has signed up to the Slow City movement and boasts a large statue of three intertwined snails accordingly. A city museum is in the planning. Until it opens, you are more likely to want to head straight to the harbor at Sığacık, something made considerably less simple by the opening of a new out-of-town bus station where you must exit the İzmir bus, wait for another to run you into town, then board a third to get to Sığacık.
Once you get there, however, you will find a quaint little settlement hunkered down behind stone walls, probably dating back to the Genoese days of the late Middle Ages. Inside the walls there's a small mosque complete with even smaller medrese and ruinous hamam. Otherwise, most of the housing here used to be pretty indifferent in design. A recent initiative has seen all the accumulated concrete and old paint stripped back so that the houses can be repainted in pastel colors. Once finished they should look a great deal more alluring.
From Sığacık, frequent buses ferry people out to the windsurfing beach at Akkum. If you'd like to visit the ruins of ancient Teos you will need to take a taxi either from Akkum or from Sığacık itself. Although Teos is thought to have been home to the largest temple to Dionysius in the ancient world, the surviving remains are fairly insubstantial; a new museum being built on the site should soon make a visit more worthwhile. Regardless, it sits in a bucolic setting amid ancient olive trees, a world away from the bustle of big-city İzmir.
Keywords:
İzmir
Source: http://www.todayszaman.com/travel_day-tripping-izmir-iii_364249.html
Monday, September 28, 2015
Day tripping İzmir: II
Day tripping İzmir: II
Acropolis, Bergama (Photo: Pat Yale)
If you're heading north or south along Turkey's Aegean coast, there's no way that you can avoid having to transit İzmir
without a lengthy diversion. But fear not -- the city may be huge, but
it's also increasingly attractive as a tourist destination if you allow
yourself enough time to get to grips with it. What's more, it makes a
great base for day tripping out to some of the many attractive archeological sites, towns and resorts in the vicinity.
Last week I suggested a number of places to visit that lie inland from İzmir, towns such as Tire, Bayındır and Ödemiş that are far more inviting than their low touristic profile might suggest. But most visitors will probably be keener to visit places that are by the sea or feature dramatic archeological remains.
Of course the single most important place that can be visited on a day trip from İzmir is Ephesus, the sprawling Roman settlement that is the main target of the cruise passengers who pour ashore here throughout the summer. But for my money Ephesus is better visited from smaller Selçuk, the medieval-to-modern town that grew up nearby, or from the cruise port-cum-holiday resort of Kuşadası, both places readily accessible from İzmir.
Bergama, however, is a place that you might easily choose to visit from İzmir since, unlike Selçuk and Kuşadası, it has a relatively small and unexciting choice of places in which to stay. Until recently, Bergama has always seemed a surprisingly under-visited town given the high quality of its historic attractions. This year, however, it was elevated to world heritage site status ahead of Ephesus and the authorities have been working hard to make it more inviting to visitors. In particular, the installation of a cable-car to get people up to the Acropolis has made Bergama a much more manageable town to get around than it used to be. Restoration work is also currently under way at the Kızıl Avlu (Red Basilica). Some may squirm at its brash new appearance, but the end result may be to turn what was very much an also-ran attraction into something far more interesting.
Bergama has three main points of interest: the Acropolis, which was once home to the incredible Altar of Zeus that now graces the Pergamum Museum in Berlin; the Asclepeion, which was once an ancient medical center; and the Bergama Museum, which houses some of the finds from the ancient spa center of Allianoi, lost beneath the waters of the Yortanlı Barajı (Dam) in 2011. The main sites aside, the older part of town is also well worth an hour or so of your time. It's the sort of place where you'll come across a café where old men play backgammon in the sun seemingly oblivious of the fact that the tarpaulin above their heads is supported on columns removed from a lost Roman building. You may also stumble upon the old abandoned synagogue that was recently renovated. Even the Kurtuluş Cami is a find since the modern mosque is housed inside a medieval tower right beside the Kızıl Avlu.
Bergama may have the ruins, but it certainly doesn't have the sea. If that's what you're after, you may prefer to head north instead to the two Foças, once important Genoese trading centers and now flourishing seaside resorts. The larger of the two is Eski (Old) Foça, which mainly straddles the headland between two harbors. Here the remains of the Genoese castle are being slowly and lovingly restored while a number of small boutique hotels have opened both behind it and around the smaller of the two harbors. As yet, though, there isn't really enough accommodation to cater for the mid-summer rush, which is one good reason for visiting on a day trip from İzmir.
Yeni (New) Foça is easily accessible by bus from Eski Foça, although there are also direct buses from İzmir. Somewhat surprisingly, it's Yeni Foça that retains more of its historic character with street after street of attractive Ottoman Greek houses running back from the small strip of sand that is its main drawcard. There are no specific attractions here, although for those who grow weary from the concrete that encases most Turkish towns this is a wonderfully relaxing and inspirational small town. You might even find yourself standing in front of the Griffin Boutique Hotel (tel: 0232-814 7777), housed in a redundant winery, and wishing that you hadn't booked that bus ticket back to İzmir.
North of the Foças is another small seaside resort that finds more favor with Turks than foreigners and that is Dikili, a pleasantly sleepy place that only really comes to life during the school summer holiday period. There's nothing specific to draw you up here if history is your thing. However, just to the south Çandarlı is home to one of the finest castles surviving from the period when the Genoese had planted trading colonies round much of the Turkish coast. Despite recent claims that it would be opening to the public, the castle remained as firmly garrisoned against visitors as ever on my most recent visit.
History lovers might also like to hop on the bus (or the train) to Torbalı, south of İzmir, where the ruins of the ancient settlement of Metropolis survive on the outskirts. While by no means as impressive as the ruins at Bergama, those at Metropolis are nonetheless interesting, with the remains of a theater, a bathhouse and a communal latrine. There's also a fine mosaic floor that the caretaker may be persuaded to soak for you so that you will be able to see how the colors would originally have glistened.
For those with an interest in biblical history, İzmir, as Smyrna, was one of the Seven Churches mentioned by St. John of Patmos in the Book of Revelation. Today the ruins of Smyrna are more accessible than they used to be thanks to a handy new Metro station at Bayraklı. Sardis, too, is readily accessible by bus from İzmir. Far fewer people realize that two more of the “churches” (actually settlements) also lie in İzmir's backyard.
Akhisar was once Thyateira, although it has little to show for the fact beyond the ruins of a building with an apse whose use remains unclear and traces of a porticoed street. Alaşehir was the original Philadelphia (City of Brotherly Love). Here at least there are remains of a church, and one that was obviously of monumental size to judge from the surviving arches that must once have supported a central dome. Doesn't seem worth going so far just for that? Well, a lengthy stretch of the old city wall also survives here and you can have fun tracking its path as it wends its way through the houses and car parks near where the bus from İzmir drops you off.
Akhisar and Alaşehir are sites of relatively minor interest except to specialists. Ditto Kemalpaşa, one of the easiest places to get to from İzmir with minibuses departing every 20 minutes from the otogar. Kemalpaşa was the ancient Nif, a fact it seems to have been determined to forget in the rush to modernity. Just one major monument survives from the period that would be well worth going out of your way to visit were it not for the fact that it is currently hidden behind scaffolding. This monument was the Laskarisler Sarayı (palace, also known locally as Kız Kulesi, the Maiden's Tower), the summer home of the Byzantine emperors living in exile in Nicaea (İznik) after the Crusaders drove them out of Constantinople (İstanbul) in 1204. The emperor responsible for its construction was actually buried in its grounds.
The scaffolding is due to come down any day soon according to the sign. Once that happens expect to see a newly restored building vaguely reminiscent of the better known Tekfur Sarayı in İstanbul.
Last week I suggested a number of places to visit that lie inland from İzmir, towns such as Tire, Bayındır and Ödemiş that are far more inviting than their low touristic profile might suggest. But most visitors will probably be keener to visit places that are by the sea or feature dramatic archeological remains.
Bergama
Of course the single most important place that can be visited on a day trip from İzmir is Ephesus, the sprawling Roman settlement that is the main target of the cruise passengers who pour ashore here throughout the summer. But for my money Ephesus is better visited from smaller Selçuk, the medieval-to-modern town that grew up nearby, or from the cruise port-cum-holiday resort of Kuşadası, both places readily accessible from İzmir.
Bergama, however, is a place that you might easily choose to visit from İzmir since, unlike Selçuk and Kuşadası, it has a relatively small and unexciting choice of places in which to stay. Until recently, Bergama has always seemed a surprisingly under-visited town given the high quality of its historic attractions. This year, however, it was elevated to world heritage site status ahead of Ephesus and the authorities have been working hard to make it more inviting to visitors. In particular, the installation of a cable-car to get people up to the Acropolis has made Bergama a much more manageable town to get around than it used to be. Restoration work is also currently under way at the Kızıl Avlu (Red Basilica). Some may squirm at its brash new appearance, but the end result may be to turn what was very much an also-ran attraction into something far more interesting.
Bergama has three main points of interest: the Acropolis, which was once home to the incredible Altar of Zeus that now graces the Pergamum Museum in Berlin; the Asclepeion, which was once an ancient medical center; and the Bergama Museum, which houses some of the finds from the ancient spa center of Allianoi, lost beneath the waters of the Yortanlı Barajı (Dam) in 2011. The main sites aside, the older part of town is also well worth an hour or so of your time. It's the sort of place where you'll come across a café where old men play backgammon in the sun seemingly oblivious of the fact that the tarpaulin above their heads is supported on columns removed from a lost Roman building. You may also stumble upon the old abandoned synagogue that was recently renovated. Even the Kurtuluş Cami is a find since the modern mosque is housed inside a medieval tower right beside the Kızıl Avlu.
Eski and Yeni Foça
Bergama may have the ruins, but it certainly doesn't have the sea. If that's what you're after, you may prefer to head north instead to the two Foças, once important Genoese trading centers and now flourishing seaside resorts. The larger of the two is Eski (Old) Foça, which mainly straddles the headland between two harbors. Here the remains of the Genoese castle are being slowly and lovingly restored while a number of small boutique hotels have opened both behind it and around the smaller of the two harbors. As yet, though, there isn't really enough accommodation to cater for the mid-summer rush, which is one good reason for visiting on a day trip from İzmir.
Yeni (New) Foça is easily accessible by bus from Eski Foça, although there are also direct buses from İzmir. Somewhat surprisingly, it's Yeni Foça that retains more of its historic character with street after street of attractive Ottoman Greek houses running back from the small strip of sand that is its main drawcard. There are no specific attractions here, although for those who grow weary from the concrete that encases most Turkish towns this is a wonderfully relaxing and inspirational small town. You might even find yourself standing in front of the Griffin Boutique Hotel (tel: 0232-814 7777), housed in a redundant winery, and wishing that you hadn't booked that bus ticket back to İzmir.
Dikili and Çandarlı
North of the Foças is another small seaside resort that finds more favor with Turks than foreigners and that is Dikili, a pleasantly sleepy place that only really comes to life during the school summer holiday period. There's nothing specific to draw you up here if history is your thing. However, just to the south Çandarlı is home to one of the finest castles surviving from the period when the Genoese had planted trading colonies round much of the Turkish coast. Despite recent claims that it would be opening to the public, the castle remained as firmly garrisoned against visitors as ever on my most recent visit.
Metropolis (Torbalı)
History lovers might also like to hop on the bus (or the train) to Torbalı, south of İzmir, where the ruins of the ancient settlement of Metropolis survive on the outskirts. While by no means as impressive as the ruins at Bergama, those at Metropolis are nonetheless interesting, with the remains of a theater, a bathhouse and a communal latrine. There's also a fine mosaic floor that the caretaker may be persuaded to soak for you so that you will be able to see how the colors would originally have glistened.
Akhisar and Alaşehir
For those with an interest in biblical history, İzmir, as Smyrna, was one of the Seven Churches mentioned by St. John of Patmos in the Book of Revelation. Today the ruins of Smyrna are more accessible than they used to be thanks to a handy new Metro station at Bayraklı. Sardis, too, is readily accessible by bus from İzmir. Far fewer people realize that two more of the “churches” (actually settlements) also lie in İzmir's backyard.
Akhisar was once Thyateira, although it has little to show for the fact beyond the ruins of a building with an apse whose use remains unclear and traces of a porticoed street. Alaşehir was the original Philadelphia (City of Brotherly Love). Here at least there are remains of a church, and one that was obviously of monumental size to judge from the surviving arches that must once have supported a central dome. Doesn't seem worth going so far just for that? Well, a lengthy stretch of the old city wall also survives here and you can have fun tracking its path as it wends its way through the houses and car parks near where the bus from İzmir drops you off.
Kemalpaşa
Akhisar and Alaşehir are sites of relatively minor interest except to specialists. Ditto Kemalpaşa, one of the easiest places to get to from İzmir with minibuses departing every 20 minutes from the otogar. Kemalpaşa was the ancient Nif, a fact it seems to have been determined to forget in the rush to modernity. Just one major monument survives from the period that would be well worth going out of your way to visit were it not for the fact that it is currently hidden behind scaffolding. This monument was the Laskarisler Sarayı (palace, also known locally as Kız Kulesi, the Maiden's Tower), the summer home of the Byzantine emperors living in exile in Nicaea (İznik) after the Crusaders drove them out of Constantinople (İstanbul) in 1204. The emperor responsible for its construction was actually buried in its grounds.
The scaffolding is due to come down any day soon according to the sign. Once that happens expect to see a newly restored building vaguely reminiscent of the better known Tekfur Sarayı in İstanbul.
Source: http://www.todayszaman.com/travel_day-tripping-izmir-ii_363701.html
Monday, September 21, 2015
Awesome Aphrodisias
Awesome Aphrodisias
(Photo: Pat Yale, Sunday's Zaman)
The small photography gallery in aphrodisias (Afrodisias) houses an extraordinary black-and-white image.
Two bearded middle-aged men in flat caps are sitting cross-legged on a bench beneath a plane tree enjoying a smoke and a chat in the quiet of their village. Look more closely, however, and you will see that this is no ordinary bench. Instead, it has armrests carved in the shape of dolphins and footrests in the shape of lions' feet. It is, in other words, a Roman bench. Yet the men sitting on it on that sunny day were doing so in 1958, when the great photographer Ara Güler had come to visit the village of Geyre, then squatting amid the remains of ancient Aphrodisias.
It goes more or less without saying that those two men were among the last Turks permitted to live here. Second in extent only to those of ephesus (Efes), the ruins of Aphrodisias were far too splendid to be left unexcavated. And so the villagers were moved to Yeni Geyre (New Geyre), leaving just a handful of the buildings of Eski Geyre (Old Geyre) to molder amid the ruins rather as they do at Stratonicea (Stratonikeia), out west near Yağatan. The amazing thing is that the marble bench still survives, still standing beneath that same plane tree, which means that you can plonk yourself down on it for a rest just as those two men did more than 50 years ago.
The gallery also displays other Güler photographs of the last days of Eski Geyre, revealing a world in which a Roman capital could be casually reused as the base for a wooden column, a piece of temple architrave as the bottom of an oil press. The romantics among us might wish that we could still see such sights, but of course that's wishful thinking.
The excavated remains of Aphrodisias cover a wide area so make sure that you allow plenty of time to do them justice. Most tours set aside no more than three hours, which is barely enough time to get all the way around the site.
You start off on your explorations from what was once the main square of Eski Geyre and is now home not just to the photography gallery but also to Aphrodisias' splendid museum, best visited at the end of your tour (but leave plenty of time for it). Most people head straight out from the square, heading for the reconstructed tetrapylon, a monumental gateway erected in the second century, probably at the junction of two main roads. From here a ceremonial walkway may have led to the Temple of Aphrodite, whose existence explains much of the ancient city's wealth and importance.
Today the remains of the temple are far from the most impressive thing to see here. However, the original structure long predated Roman occupation of the site and seems to have started life as a place where a goddess combining the attributes of the ancient Semitic fertility deity, Ishtar and the ancient Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite, was worshipped, apparently with much unseemly behavior. Needless to say, the later Christian occupants of the city were less than happy with the temple's reputation and hastily built a Byzantine basilican church over the site of the temple's final incarnation under Emperor Hadrian (r. 117-38). Not content with that, they hacked the cult statue of Aphrodite to pieces and rammed the body into a wall as building material, an ignominious fate from which it has since been rescued.
More impressive to look at are the ruins of the 262-meter-long stadium, probably built in the first or second century and able to seat up to 30,000 spectators in tiers of seats 30 deep. Here the locals held an annual festival that must have been a little like a cut-down version of the Olympic Games and that was apparently modeled on the Pythian Games in Delphi (Greece), with lots of wrestling and racing.
The stadium is a little apart from the main site. Returning from it you pass behind the Temple of Aphrodite and come to the remains of the Bishop's Palace with, right beside it, a dainty little bouleuterion (council house) where small theatrical performances probably took place when it wasn't needed for government business.
Beyond the bouleuterion you will come to the ruins of the baths of Hadrian and then, over a hill, to the fine theater, originally paid for some time between 39 and 27 B.C. by a prominent local citizen called Julius Zoilos, whose statue can be seen in the museum. In the second century B.C. it was extensively altered to accommodate gladiatorial fights and it's that later version that you look down on today.
But at Aphrodisias the very best is also best saved until last, and that is the splendid partially reconstructed Sebasteion, a huge temple complex that, while also paying homage to Aphrodite, was really a shrine to the deified Roman emperors. Most particularly it was a shrine to Augustus (r. 27 B.C.-A.D. 14) and his immediate descendants, Nero and Claudius, who appeared in the carvings adorning the two lofty porticoes that flanked the actual temple. Today those carvings are one of the greatest, yet least-sung glories of Aphrodisias.
Five years ago the doors of the Aphrodisias Museum reopened to show off one of the finest displays of ancient sculpture to be seen anywhere in the world. In antiquity, the town was well known for a school of sculpture that made use of locally quarried marble to produce exquisite carvings, sometimes entwining black and white marble to stunning effect. According to the Blue Guide travel guidebook, sculptures from Aphrodisias have been found as far afield as Leptis Magna in Libya and Tivoli in Italy. Of course the finest collection is on display here in the local museum.
There are many things to wow the visitor here, not least the battered remains of the statue of Aphrodite removed from the walls of the later church. But in the end everything pales into insignificance the minute you step across the threshold of the new gallery designed to house the original carvings from the Sebasteion. As an anonymous blogger wrote after a visit, “Aphrodisias (Museum) has more reliefs than the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum,” going on to note that only the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, home to the carvings from the Altar of Zeus, has more.
One could no doubt argue over whether the considerably older (fifth century B.C.) Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon in Athens are finer pieces of art. The one thing almost anyone who visits this gallery will probably agree on is that it makes the case for the return of the Elgin Marbles to Greece almost unanswerable. Here you can look at the Sebasteion, then wander into the museum to look at the carvings that once adorned it, then step outside again for another look. What could be more perfect? Why are the crowds not flocking here by the thousands?
There is no accommodation at Aphrodisias itself and only limited accommodation down the road in Geyre. Most people visit the site on tours from Pamukkale, where there is accommodation to suit all tastes either in the village, in the nearby thermal resort of Karahayıt or in Denizli town.
Allgau Pension, Pamukkale. Tel: 0258-272 2028
Hotel Laodikya, Denizli. Tel: 0258-265 1506
Hotel Koray, Pamukkale. Tel: 0258-272 2300
Richmond Pamukkale Thermal Hotel, Karahayıt. Tel: 0258-271 4294
The nearest airport to Aphrodisias is in Denizli, which is also easily accessible by train from İzmir and Selçuk. From Denizli there are regular minibuses to Pamukkale and Karahayıt. Pamukkale hotel and pension owners will be able to book a transport-only tour to Aphrodisias for you, although if you drive yourself you will probably be able to spend more time there.
Two bearded middle-aged men in flat caps are sitting cross-legged on a bench beneath a plane tree enjoying a smoke and a chat in the quiet of their village. Look more closely, however, and you will see that this is no ordinary bench. Instead, it has armrests carved in the shape of dolphins and footrests in the shape of lions' feet. It is, in other words, a Roman bench. Yet the men sitting on it on that sunny day were doing so in 1958, when the great photographer Ara Güler had come to visit the village of Geyre, then squatting amid the remains of ancient Aphrodisias.
It goes more or less without saying that those two men were among the last Turks permitted to live here. Second in extent only to those of ephesus (Efes), the ruins of Aphrodisias were far too splendid to be left unexcavated. And so the villagers were moved to Yeni Geyre (New Geyre), leaving just a handful of the buildings of Eski Geyre (Old Geyre) to molder amid the ruins rather as they do at Stratonicea (Stratonikeia), out west near Yağatan. The amazing thing is that the marble bench still survives, still standing beneath that same plane tree, which means that you can plonk yourself down on it for a rest just as those two men did more than 50 years ago.
The gallery also displays other Güler photographs of the last days of Eski Geyre, revealing a world in which a Roman capital could be casually reused as the base for a wooden column, a piece of temple architrave as the bottom of an oil press. The romantics among us might wish that we could still see such sights, but of course that's wishful thinking.
The site
The excavated remains of Aphrodisias cover a wide area so make sure that you allow plenty of time to do them justice. Most tours set aside no more than three hours, which is barely enough time to get all the way around the site.
You start off on your explorations from what was once the main square of Eski Geyre and is now home not just to the photography gallery but also to Aphrodisias' splendid museum, best visited at the end of your tour (but leave plenty of time for it). Most people head straight out from the square, heading for the reconstructed tetrapylon, a monumental gateway erected in the second century, probably at the junction of two main roads. From here a ceremonial walkway may have led to the Temple of Aphrodite, whose existence explains much of the ancient city's wealth and importance.
Today the remains of the temple are far from the most impressive thing to see here. However, the original structure long predated Roman occupation of the site and seems to have started life as a place where a goddess combining the attributes of the ancient Semitic fertility deity, Ishtar and the ancient Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite, was worshipped, apparently with much unseemly behavior. Needless to say, the later Christian occupants of the city were less than happy with the temple's reputation and hastily built a Byzantine basilican church over the site of the temple's final incarnation under Emperor Hadrian (r. 117-38). Not content with that, they hacked the cult statue of Aphrodite to pieces and rammed the body into a wall as building material, an ignominious fate from which it has since been rescued.
More impressive to look at are the ruins of the 262-meter-long stadium, probably built in the first or second century and able to seat up to 30,000 spectators in tiers of seats 30 deep. Here the locals held an annual festival that must have been a little like a cut-down version of the Olympic Games and that was apparently modeled on the Pythian Games in Delphi (Greece), with lots of wrestling and racing.
The stadium is a little apart from the main site. Returning from it you pass behind the Temple of Aphrodite and come to the remains of the Bishop's Palace with, right beside it, a dainty little bouleuterion (council house) where small theatrical performances probably took place when it wasn't needed for government business.
Beyond the bouleuterion you will come to the ruins of the baths of Hadrian and then, over a hill, to the fine theater, originally paid for some time between 39 and 27 B.C. by a prominent local citizen called Julius Zoilos, whose statue can be seen in the museum. In the second century B.C. it was extensively altered to accommodate gladiatorial fights and it's that later version that you look down on today.
But at Aphrodisias the very best is also best saved until last, and that is the splendid partially reconstructed Sebasteion, a huge temple complex that, while also paying homage to Aphrodite, was really a shrine to the deified Roman emperors. Most particularly it was a shrine to Augustus (r. 27 B.C.-A.D. 14) and his immediate descendants, Nero and Claudius, who appeared in the carvings adorning the two lofty porticoes that flanked the actual temple. Today those carvings are one of the greatest, yet least-sung glories of Aphrodisias.
The museum
Five years ago the doors of the Aphrodisias Museum reopened to show off one of the finest displays of ancient sculpture to be seen anywhere in the world. In antiquity, the town was well known for a school of sculpture that made use of locally quarried marble to produce exquisite carvings, sometimes entwining black and white marble to stunning effect. According to the Blue Guide travel guidebook, sculptures from Aphrodisias have been found as far afield as Leptis Magna in Libya and Tivoli in Italy. Of course the finest collection is on display here in the local museum.
There are many things to wow the visitor here, not least the battered remains of the statue of Aphrodite removed from the walls of the later church. But in the end everything pales into insignificance the minute you step across the threshold of the new gallery designed to house the original carvings from the Sebasteion. As an anonymous blogger wrote after a visit, “Aphrodisias (Museum) has more reliefs than the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum,” going on to note that only the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, home to the carvings from the Altar of Zeus, has more.
One could no doubt argue over whether the considerably older (fifth century B.C.) Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon in Athens are finer pieces of art. The one thing almost anyone who visits this gallery will probably agree on is that it makes the case for the return of the Elgin Marbles to Greece almost unanswerable. Here you can look at the Sebasteion, then wander into the museum to look at the carvings that once adorned it, then step outside again for another look. What could be more perfect? Why are the crowds not flocking here by the thousands?
Where to stay
There is no accommodation at Aphrodisias itself and only limited accommodation down the road in Geyre. Most people visit the site on tours from Pamukkale, where there is accommodation to suit all tastes either in the village, in the nearby thermal resort of Karahayıt or in Denizli town.
Allgau Pension, Pamukkale. Tel: 0258-272 2028
Hotel Laodikya, Denizli. Tel: 0258-265 1506
Hotel Koray, Pamukkale. Tel: 0258-272 2300
Richmond Pamukkale Thermal Hotel, Karahayıt. Tel: 0258-271 4294
How to get there
The nearest airport to Aphrodisias is in Denizli, which is also easily accessible by train from İzmir and Selçuk. From Denizli there are regular minibuses to Pamukkale and Karahayıt. Pamukkale hotel and pension owners will be able to book a transport-only tour to Aphrodisias for you, although if you drive yourself you will probably be able to spend more time there.
source:http://www.todayszaman.com/travel_awesome-aphrodisias_351451.html
Monday, September 14, 2015
Day tripping İzmir
Day tripping İzmir
Manisa Festival (Photo: Pat Yale)
Let's face it -- İzmir,
right in the middle of Turkey's Aegean coast, is one hell of a big
city. So if you're heading from north to south or vice versa you're
going to have to decide what to do about it -- factor in the time for a
visit or give it a wide berth?
Personally, I think that it's worth spending a few days in İzmir now that the Metro system makes getting about town so much easier than it used to be. That's not only because İzmir itself has plenty of pleasant areas to explore if you allow enough time to get to grips with it but also because it makes a good base for exploring quite a lot of small towns, archaeological sites and resorts nearby, most of the onward transportation to the surrounding areas leaving from the upper floor of the same bus station that will have delivered you to İzmir. Which raises another interesting possibility -- if you don't actually want to stay in a big city you could easily opt to overnight in one of these neighboring places and just hop in and out of İzmir Otogar to get to the others.
The Metro was recently extended to Üçkuyular, site of İzmir's second bus station serving Çeşme, Seferihisar and the Karaburun Peninsula. But let's start off by taking a look at some of the places you can reach from the main otogar.
One of my very favorite small towns has to be Tire, not so long ago an almost forgotten backwater known, if it was known at all, for its big Tuesday street market. Slowly but surely that is starting to change as the local authority wises up to what a treasure it has in its hands, as typified by the recent opening of a pleasing new Kent Müzesi (City Museum) with lots of information on the old handicrafts that are still being practised in the old part of town. The interviews with some of the workers -- helpfully translated into English -- make somewhat sobering reading. With the sole exception of the one with Arif Con, feltmaker extraordinaire, they tell a sad story of trades dying a death with no one to carry them on once the current practitioners are done.
After reading them, it's well worth making a beeline for Con's shop, a buzzing hive of colorful activity where the old and somewhat tired art of feltmaking has been given a completely modern makeover. Out have gone the heavy, square-shouldered coats once made for shepherds. In have come gossamer-fine shawls it would be hard to believe had been made from felt if you'd not seen the work in progress in the shop.
Tire is a place of small pleasures, with a myriad minor mosques, medreses and other monuments dating back to the Beylik period between the Selçuk supremacy and the Ottoman conquest. Some of the old Ottoman housing stock is also being spruced up, most conspicuously in the case of the Gülcüoğlu Konakları (tel: 0232-511 0614), which now serve as a very popular hotel (book ahead midweek). If you can't get in, no matter, because the high-rise Tirem Hotel (tel: 0232-511 0200) right beside the bus stop for İzmir has been given a colorful new look that makes it a decent alternative.
If Tire falls below most people's radars, Bayındır is even less well known despite having a similar mix of attractions. Here, too, the authorities are belatedly waking up to what they have to offer and the old Tekel building was recently converted into another Kent Müzesi, albeit this time with no English translations. Come here to find out about the Efes, the local braves whose bloodthirsty exploits somewhat belie their showy costumes. Here, too, you'll see photographs of local women wearing the siyah çizgi, a black shawl and headscarf combination with a white pattern around its edge. At the Friday market you'll still see older women wearing it but within a generation it will be gone.
Bayındır's main claim to fame is that it lies at the heart of Turkey's flower-growing region. Every year at the end of April/start of May there's a lively flower festival to coincide with the time when the surrounding fields are full of vibrant color for kilometer after kilometer. It's a sight well worth seeing, especially now that the old local government building has been converted into the inviting Suotel (tel: 0232-581 5966).
The strange thing about the siyah çizgi is that although you'll be able to see women wearing it in Bayındır you won't be to buy one there. Instead to buy one you'll have to head for nearby Ödemiş whose Saturday market is almost a match for Tire's Tuesday one, thrusting out tentacles into all the back streets in the center of town. Here, too, there's a fine Kent Müzesi. It's only labeled in Turkish but it won't take much imagination to realize that this was once an area known for its tobacco industry, with entire walls of houses hung with drying leaves in season.
The main reason to come to Ödemiş, however, will be to hop the bus to pretty little Birgi, surely one of Turkey's most delightful villages and where the environmental organization ÇEKÜL has done excellent work in encouraging sensitive signposting and discouraging concrete blight. Birgi is home to the finest Ottoman house open to the public in Turkey. The Çakırağa Konağı is an absolute delight, its front consisting of three floors of open verandahs that give it the strange appearance of a child's toy theater. Nor is that the only gem on offer here. The Ulu Cami is also worth going out of your way to see. Like the minor mosques of Tire, it, too, is a monument to the Beylik period with fine woodwork surviving and odd pieces of Roman masonry reused in the walls.
A stay at the Birgi Çınaraltı Pansiyon (tel: 0537-927 4217) is always a peaceful delight but Ödemiş also rises to a couple of decent options, including the Otel Güven (tel: 0232-509 0909).
Its proximity to İzmir means that people sometimes omit to visit Manisa, a town with an interesting history as one of the places where the early Ottoman princes were sent to learn statecraft. The palace in which they lived has vanished without trace but their presence in the town explains why there's a mosque by Sinan, the Muradiye Cami, in such a seemingly out of the way place.
The Sinan mosque is delightful, its rich tiled interior standing in stark contrast to the town's other splendid mosque, the more austere Ulu Cami, erected in the Beylik period and making copious use of marble columns and capitals filched from an older Roman building.
Manisa Museum should be a winner since it houses the finds from nearby Sardis. Unfortunately it has been closed for restoration for years. Instead you should consider whether you couldn't plan a trip to coincide with the end of March when the town bursts into celebration for the Manisa Mesir Festival, a centuries' old commemoration of the day when a local man, Merkez Efendi, succeeded where other doctors had failed and cured Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent's mother, Hafza Sultan, of debilitating illness with a mixture of 41 ingredients that are now ritually tossed to the waiting crowds from the roof of the Sultan Cami medrese by Ottoman costumed figures. It's a fun day out for all the family.
Manisa Museum may fail to deliver but the nearby archaeological site of Sardis, up the road at Sart, near Salihli, more than makes up for the disappointment. The main site showcases the splendid mosaic pavements of what must have been one of the largest synagogues in ancient Asia Minor, with right beside it, the reconstructed Court of the Hall of the Imperial Cult providing a slight echo of the Library of Celsus at Ephesus.
Up the road and easy to overlook are the romantic ruins of one of the largest temples in the ancient world, dedicated to Artemis and picturesquely set against a mountain backdrop. There's an almost intact Byzantine church hunkered down amid the columns. (to be continued)
Personally, I think that it's worth spending a few days in İzmir now that the Metro system makes getting about town so much easier than it used to be. That's not only because İzmir itself has plenty of pleasant areas to explore if you allow enough time to get to grips with it but also because it makes a good base for exploring quite a lot of small towns, archaeological sites and resorts nearby, most of the onward transportation to the surrounding areas leaving from the upper floor of the same bus station that will have delivered you to İzmir. Which raises another interesting possibility -- if you don't actually want to stay in a big city you could easily opt to overnight in one of these neighboring places and just hop in and out of İzmir Otogar to get to the others.
The Metro was recently extended to Üçkuyular, site of İzmir's second bus station serving Çeşme, Seferihisar and the Karaburun Peninsula. But let's start off by taking a look at some of the places you can reach from the main otogar.
Tire
One of my very favorite small towns has to be Tire, not so long ago an almost forgotten backwater known, if it was known at all, for its big Tuesday street market. Slowly but surely that is starting to change as the local authority wises up to what a treasure it has in its hands, as typified by the recent opening of a pleasing new Kent Müzesi (City Museum) with lots of information on the old handicrafts that are still being practised in the old part of town. The interviews with some of the workers -- helpfully translated into English -- make somewhat sobering reading. With the sole exception of the one with Arif Con, feltmaker extraordinaire, they tell a sad story of trades dying a death with no one to carry them on once the current practitioners are done.
After reading them, it's well worth making a beeline for Con's shop, a buzzing hive of colorful activity where the old and somewhat tired art of feltmaking has been given a completely modern makeover. Out have gone the heavy, square-shouldered coats once made for shepherds. In have come gossamer-fine shawls it would be hard to believe had been made from felt if you'd not seen the work in progress in the shop.
Tire is a place of small pleasures, with a myriad minor mosques, medreses and other monuments dating back to the Beylik period between the Selçuk supremacy and the Ottoman conquest. Some of the old Ottoman housing stock is also being spruced up, most conspicuously in the case of the Gülcüoğlu Konakları (tel: 0232-511 0614), which now serve as a very popular hotel (book ahead midweek). If you can't get in, no matter, because the high-rise Tirem Hotel (tel: 0232-511 0200) right beside the bus stop for İzmir has been given a colorful new look that makes it a decent alternative.
Bayındır
If Tire falls below most people's radars, Bayındır is even less well known despite having a similar mix of attractions. Here, too, the authorities are belatedly waking up to what they have to offer and the old Tekel building was recently converted into another Kent Müzesi, albeit this time with no English translations. Come here to find out about the Efes, the local braves whose bloodthirsty exploits somewhat belie their showy costumes. Here, too, you'll see photographs of local women wearing the siyah çizgi, a black shawl and headscarf combination with a white pattern around its edge. At the Friday market you'll still see older women wearing it but within a generation it will be gone.
Bayındır's main claim to fame is that it lies at the heart of Turkey's flower-growing region. Every year at the end of April/start of May there's a lively flower festival to coincide with the time when the surrounding fields are full of vibrant color for kilometer after kilometer. It's a sight well worth seeing, especially now that the old local government building has been converted into the inviting Suotel (tel: 0232-581 5966).
Ödemiş and Birgi
The strange thing about the siyah çizgi is that although you'll be able to see women wearing it in Bayındır you won't be to buy one there. Instead to buy one you'll have to head for nearby Ödemiş whose Saturday market is almost a match for Tire's Tuesday one, thrusting out tentacles into all the back streets in the center of town. Here, too, there's a fine Kent Müzesi. It's only labeled in Turkish but it won't take much imagination to realize that this was once an area known for its tobacco industry, with entire walls of houses hung with drying leaves in season.
The main reason to come to Ödemiş, however, will be to hop the bus to pretty little Birgi, surely one of Turkey's most delightful villages and where the environmental organization ÇEKÜL has done excellent work in encouraging sensitive signposting and discouraging concrete blight. Birgi is home to the finest Ottoman house open to the public in Turkey. The Çakırağa Konağı is an absolute delight, its front consisting of three floors of open verandahs that give it the strange appearance of a child's toy theater. Nor is that the only gem on offer here. The Ulu Cami is also worth going out of your way to see. Like the minor mosques of Tire, it, too, is a monument to the Beylik period with fine woodwork surviving and odd pieces of Roman masonry reused in the walls.
A stay at the Birgi Çınaraltı Pansiyon (tel: 0537-927 4217) is always a peaceful delight but Ödemiş also rises to a couple of decent options, including the Otel Güven (tel: 0232-509 0909).
Manisa
Its proximity to İzmir means that people sometimes omit to visit Manisa, a town with an interesting history as one of the places where the early Ottoman princes were sent to learn statecraft. The palace in which they lived has vanished without trace but their presence in the town explains why there's a mosque by Sinan, the Muradiye Cami, in such a seemingly out of the way place.
The Sinan mosque is delightful, its rich tiled interior standing in stark contrast to the town's other splendid mosque, the more austere Ulu Cami, erected in the Beylik period and making copious use of marble columns and capitals filched from an older Roman building.
Manisa Museum should be a winner since it houses the finds from nearby Sardis. Unfortunately it has been closed for restoration for years. Instead you should consider whether you couldn't plan a trip to coincide with the end of March when the town bursts into celebration for the Manisa Mesir Festival, a centuries' old commemoration of the day when a local man, Merkez Efendi, succeeded where other doctors had failed and cured Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent's mother, Hafza Sultan, of debilitating illness with a mixture of 41 ingredients that are now ritually tossed to the waiting crowds from the roof of the Sultan Cami medrese by Ottoman costumed figures. It's a fun day out for all the family.
Sardis
Manisa Museum may fail to deliver but the nearby archaeological site of Sardis, up the road at Sart, near Salihli, more than makes up for the disappointment. The main site showcases the splendid mosaic pavements of what must have been one of the largest synagogues in ancient Asia Minor, with right beside it, the reconstructed Court of the Hall of the Imperial Cult providing a slight echo of the Library of Celsus at Ephesus.
Up the road and easy to overlook are the romantic ruins of one of the largest temples in the ancient world, dedicated to Artemis and picturesquely set against a mountain backdrop. There's an almost intact Byzantine church hunkered down amid the columns. (to be continued)
Source: http://www.todayszaman.com/travel_day-tripping-izmir_363109.html
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