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CITY GUIDE / 64 discovery ideas
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İzmir.
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Search this city by topic →Konak Clock Tower
Stand in Konak Square beneath the ornate 1901 Ottoman clock tower with its Moorish arches and fountains, catch the trams and pigeons swirling around it — and photograph it.
Kordon Waterfront Ride
Rent a bike or stroll the palm-lined Kordon promenade in Alsancak as the sun sets over the Gulf of İzmir and horse carriages pass along the sea — and photograph it.
Kemeraltı Bazaar
Wander the labyrinth of Kemeraltı's covered lanes, past spice sacks, coppersmiths and dried-fig stalls in İzmir's centuries-old market — and photograph it.
Ferry to Karşıyaka
Board the city ferry from Konak pier and cross the Gulf of İzmir to Karşıyaka, gulls trailing the wake and the Kordon skyline receding behind you — and photograph it.
Historic Asansör
Ride the 1907 stone-tower elevator up the Karataş cliff and step onto the terrace for a sweeping view over the red rooftops and bay of İzmir — and photograph it.
Boyoz and Kumru Feast
Grab a flaky boyoz pastry and a stuffed sesame kumru sandwich from a Kemeraltı stall, İzmir's signature street breakfast, before your first bite — and photograph it.
Kadifekale Fortress
Climb to the Byzantine walls of Kadifekale crowning İzmir's highest hill and frame the whole city cascading down to the gulf below — and photograph it.
Kızlarağası Han
Step into the 18th-century Kızlarağası Han courtyard, its arcaded galleries hung with lanterns, carpets and copper wares beside a cup of Turkish coffee — and photograph it.
Agora of Smyrna
Walk among the arched Roman vaults and marble colonnades of the ancient Agora of Smyrna, the ceremonial heart of İzmir two millennia ago — and photograph it.
Take the cable car up to the Pergamon Acropolis
Tour the Asclepion and the Acropolis on the same day; stand on the foundations of the ancient Pergamon library — and photograph it.
Alsancak Backstreets
Wander the colorful bay-windowed Levantine houses and vine-draped cafés of Alsancak's backstreets, İzmir's most photogenic old quarter — and photograph it.
Kültürpark Greens
Explore the tree-lined avenues, lake and pavilions of Kültürpark, the vast green heart of İzmir laid out for the İzmir International Fair — and photograph it.
Walk the entire colonnaded street in ancient Ephesus
Tour the Library of Celsus, the Great Theatre and the House of the Virgin Mary in a connected route in one day — and photograph it.
Spend a day in Birgi
A lion hides at the southeast corner of Birgi's Great Mosque: a marble sculpture reused from an earlier building. Find and photograph it from the street, then look for stone meeting timber on a house façade. Remember Birgi, on UNESCO's World Heritage Tentative List, through these layers of time.
Story and sources →Settle the menemen argument in Menemen
The dish carries the town's name as a registered indication, which does not settle the onion question but does mean there is a defined way to make it here. Order it where the name comes from and see which side the town is on. Photograph the pan, not the plate.
Saint Polycarp Church
Enter İzmir's oldest church, Saint Polycarp, and look up at its trompe-l'oeil frescoed dome and gilded altar glowing in candlelight — and photograph it.
Pay the extra ticket for the Ephesus Terrace Houses
Behind a separate door and a separate fee, the hillside villas keep their mosaics, frescoes and marble rooms under a modern roof — the part of Ephesus most visitors walk past. Go in — and photograph it.
Walk the Levantine mansions of Bornova
Nineteenth-century merchant families — Whittall, Paterson, Giraud — built their summer houses out here when Bornova was countryside, and a row of them still stands, some restored into university buildings. They look like nothing else in Türkiye because they were not meant to: they are English and Italian country houses dropped into an Aegean plain. Photograph a facade whole.
Eat a kumru in the town that named it
The sandwich sold all over Turkey as "Çeşme kumrusu" comes from here: a hard sesame roll split and filled with tomato, tulum cheese and sausage, pressed hot. Eat one at the source — and photograph it.
Visit the House of the Virgin Mary on Bülbüldağı
On Bülbüldağı above Ephesus, a small stone house identified in the nineteenth century from a nun's visions is venerated by Christians and Muslims alike, with a wall of tied prayer cloths beside it. Go up — and photograph it.
Take the ferry to Chios for the morning
The Greek island is forty minutes across the strait, close enough that its hills fill the view from the Çeşme waterfront. Cross over — and photograph it.
Find the hot spots in the sea at Ilıca
Thermal water rises through the sand straight into the bay, so the shallows go suddenly warm in patches you find with your feet. Stand in one — and photograph it.
Eat a Kemalpaşa cherry in its two-week window
The registered cherry of the Nif valley, picked and gone within about a fortnight, which is why the roadside stands appear and vanish. Buy from a stand at the orchard rather than in town — the difference between the two is a day. Photograph a handful with the stems still on.
Watch camel wrestling in the Aegean winter
Every January decorated bull camels are walked through town and set against each other in a field while whole families picnic around the ring — an Aegean winter tradition, and Selçuk holds the largest of them. Go — and photograph it.
Explore the Historical Port City of Izmir
The vaulted galleries in the basement of the Smyrna Agora are still standing, and the ancient water system inside them still works — it runs after rain. A second city underneath the city. Photograph the galleries.
İzmir's boyoz-and-tulumba breakfast classic
Boyoz, a legacy of the Sephardic Jews, in Kemeraltı; then coffee atop the Asansör (Elevator) — and photograph it.
Explore Izmir historic synagogues
Nine synagogues stand within walking distance in Kemeraltı, several of them side by side — a density found in very few places on earth. Five hundred years of Sephardic life after 1492 sit on this one street. Photograph a courtyard.
Stand at the single column of the Artemision
The Temple of Artemis was another of the Seven Wonders, and what survives is one re-erected column standing in a marshy field with storks nesting on top. Find it — and photograph it.
Tour the Çamlık Steam Locomotive Museum
See Turkey's largest open-air railway museum, with dozens of historic steam locomotives on display outdoors — and photograph it.
Watch beledi weaving on a Tire loom
Beledi is a registered Tire weave and there are only a handful of people left who work it, on wooden looms, in cotton, in stripes that read as a pattern from across a room and as a structure up close. The Tuesday market is where you find it without an appointment. Photograph the shuttle mid-pass.
Stand where the word parchment was born
When Egypt cut off the papyrus supply, Pergamon wrote on treated skin instead — and the material still carries the town's name, charta pergamena. Its library was second only to Alexandria. See the site — and photograph it.
Alaçatı stone houses and old Greek architecture in Çeşme
Do a peninsula tour: breakfast in Alaçatı, Çeşme Castle and a thermal sea swim in Ilıca — and photograph it.
Story and sources →Walk into Metropolis with nobody there
A Hellenistic and Roman city on a hillside above Torbalı, with a theatre, baths and a stoa, excavated steadily for decades and visited by almost no one — you can have the theatre to yourself on a weekday. That emptiness is the whole experience. Photograph the seats from the stage floor.
Walk the walls of Çeşme castle over the harbour
The Genoese-founded, Ottoman-rebuilt fortress stands directly above the ferry quay, and from the ramparts the whole strait to Chios opens up. Walk the walls — and photograph it.
Wander the Ottoman mansions of Birgi (Best Tourism Village)
In Birgi, named a UN 'Best Tourism Village,' see the Çakırağa Mansion and the living open-air museum in the stone streets — and photograph it.
Taste mastic on the Turkish side of the strait
Mastic resin grows on the island across the water and the taste crossed with the people: Çeşme eats it as a stretchy ice cream and a pale pudding you will not find inland. Order one — and photograph it.
Explore the Sığacık producer market
The municipality describes the regular Sığacık market as a Sunday market. Reconfirm the current schedule before visiting and discover a local product.
Story and sources →Set out on the Urla vineyard route
Do tastings at vineyard estates such as Mozaik, Urlice and USCA in Urla, sampling local products along the way — and photograph it.
Eat an Ödemiş potato plainly
A registered potato, grown in the volcanic soil of the Küçük Menderes plain, and the way to test whether the registration means anything is to eat it with nothing on it — boiled, salt only. Locals will tell you it needs no butter, and they are making a claim you can check. Photograph the plate before you decide.
Stop at Foça's stone houses and fishing harbor
Walk the cobbled streets of old Foça; eat fresh fish at the fishing shelter — and photograph it.
Breakfast on Alaçatı's stone streets and the Herb Festival (April)
Have a long breakfast among bougainvillea-clad stone houses; time it with the spring Herb Festival celebrating local greens — and photograph it.
Story and sources →Find the Levantine houses hiding in Buca
Buca got the same wave of Levantine building as Bornova and kept less of it, so here it is a hunt rather than a walk — a gate, a garden wall, a house swallowed by later blocks. The Forbes and de Jongh houses are the ones to start from. Photograph one that the street has grown around.
Stand in the town that founded Marseille
Around 600 BC sailors from Phokaia crossed the Mediterranean and founded Massalia — today's Marseille, France's second city. This harbour of seventeen thousand people is its mother city. Stand on the quay — and photograph it.
Taste North Aegean oil where the register draws the line
Kuzey Ege Zeytinyağı is registered to a strip that runs Dikili, Bergama's Zeytindağ and Şakran — a boundary drawn on the ground, not on a brand. Taste it beside a southern Aegean oil and the difference the register is protecting becomes something you can actually taste. Photograph the two glasses together.
Walk the sacred way of the Asklepion
One of the ancient world's great healing centres treated patients with water, sleep and dream interpretation, and its colonnaded way, tunnel and theatre are still walkable. Walk it — and photograph it.
Climb to the Basilica of St John above Selçuk
On the castle hill, the ruined sixth-century basilica marks the traditional grave of the apostle, with the whole plain and the Artemision column below. Walk up — and photograph it.
Walk through Bayındır's nurseries
A district that grows ornamental plants for the rest of the country — field after field of roses, saplings and cut flowers, which makes an ordinary agricultural landscape look deliberately arranged. Growers will let you walk if you ask. Photograph a row running to the horizon.
Sail out to the Siren Rocks off Foça
The rocks Homer's sirens were said to sing from are a protected reserve for the Mediterranean monk seal, and boats go out to circle them without landing. Sail there — and photograph it.
Stand inside the Red Basilica
A colossal Roman temple to Egyptian gods, later a church, still rises in red brick in the middle of the modern town with the river running in tunnels beneath it. Step in — and photograph it.
Go to the Urla artichoke festival in spring
The peninsula's artichoke harvest gets its own April weekend of cooking, growers and street stalls, and the vegetable turns up in everything for three days. Join it — and photograph it.
International İzmir Festival (June-July)
Watch classical concerts and dance performances at historic venues, including the Ephesus Ancient Theatre — and photograph it.
Find a Bergama rug still on the loom
Bergama is a named carpet type, not just a place that sells them: flat geometric fields in madder red and dark blue, woven in the villages around the town. Watch one being made — and photograph it.
Walk the Temple of Dionysos at Teos
The best-preserved Dionysos temple in Anatolia lies in olive groves a short walk from the harbour, its columns re-erected among the trees with nobody around. Walk it — and photograph it.
See the ancient olive-oil workshop at Klazomenai
A reconstructed sixth-century BC press shows how oil was separated by water 2,600 years ago — one of the oldest olive-oil works ever excavated, on the coast that still lives off it. Visit it — and photograph it.
Watch the wind come up at Pırlanta beach
The exposed southern beach is where the peninsula's wind actually lives — sand, whitecaps, kites going up in the afternoon. Feel it — and photograph it.
Have breakfast in the stone village of Germiyan
Inland from the resorts, a farming village of stone houses serves its own cheese, eggs and herbs at long tables, with nothing else going on. Sit down — and photograph it.
Find the rock-cut tomb they call the Devil's Bath
On the road out of town a chamber cut straight into the rock — a Phokaian tomb of the sixth century BC, older than most of what stands in Turkey — sits unmarked by the roadside. Find it — and photograph it.
Climb to the Erythrai theatre above Ildırı
An Ionian city sits half-excavated on the hill over a fishing village, its theatre cut into the slope facing the sea, and most days you have it to yourself. Walk up — and photograph it.
Kitesurf or windsurf in Alaçatı
Stay a week at one of the world's best windsurfing destinations, with steady sea breezes — and photograph it.
Story and sources →Paraglide at Bozdağ
Paraglide at Bozdağ in İzmir — and photograph it.
Walk the Efeler Way
Walk the Efeler Way culture route in Izmir and Aydin — and photograph it.
Birdwatch at Gediz Delta
Birdwatch at Gediz Delta wetland — and photograph it.
Buy nazar beads in Izmir (Gorece)
Only a handful of masters still make these in wood-fired furnaces, and the whole thing is done at the mouth of the fire with a rod: the glass has to stay at working heat, so the eye is built in seconds and cannot be corrected. Photograph the furnace mouth, not the finished tray.
Ride the Izmir Blue Train (Ankara–Izmir)
Ride the Izmir Blue Train between Ankara and Izmir — and photograph it.
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