The 5 things to see in Izmir ( Smyrna )

After a short break on Turkey, these blogs will analyze as many countries as possible, one by one.

Today we will see another city to see if you ever land on Turkish soil, Izmir or I would say Smyrna in the local language.

First of all, a little introduction to Izmir, it is a city on the Aegean coast. Known in antiquity with the name of Smyrna, it was founded by the Greeks, conquered by the Romans and rebuilt by Alexander the Great, before entering a part of the Ottoman Empire in the fifteenth century.

1 THE WATCH TOWER
Izmir Clock Tower (Turkish: Izmir Saat Kulesi) is a historic clock tower located in Konak Square, in the homonymous district of the city of Smyrna in Turkey.

The clock tower was designed by the French architect Levantine Raymond Charles Père and was built in 1901 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the ascension to the throne of Abdulhamid II.

The Smyrna Clock Tower has an important history for the city and for the whole of Turkey from 1983 to 1989.

2 ASANSOR
Asansör (Turkish for "elevator", derived from the French word ascenseur) is a historical building in the Karataş district of Izmir, within the boundaries of the metropolitan district of Konak. It was built in 1907 as a public service by a rich Jewish banker and merchant of that period, Nesim Levi Bayraklıoğlu, to facilitate the passage from the narrow coast of Karataş to the hill, the elevator inside the building that serves to transport people and goods across the steep cliff between the two parts of the neighborhood.

Climb to the top you will see one of the most beautiful landscapes of all Izmir, at sunset you will see the city colored with warm colors and you will feel all the warmth that pervades you.

3 PIAZZA KONAK
Konak is the undisputed nerve center of Smyrna, recently retrained as a recreational space and therefore always very crowded. In the square is the statue of Hasan Tahsin (Turkish journalist and patriot), the Yali mosque embellished with numerous mosaics, the clock tower, the town hall building and the government building.

4 EPHESIAN AND THE CHURCH OF THE VIRGIN MARY
Èfeso (Greek: Éphesos, Latin: Ephesus) is one of the most visited archaeological sites in all of Turkey, a notoriety fully justified because it is a place where the history of the civilizations that have appeared along the shores of the Mediterranean, the Temple of Artemis ad Ephesus was among the seven wonders of the ancient world. Ephesus was one of the largest Ionic cities in Anatolia.

5 THE THEATER OF EPHESUS
Located in the eastern part of the city, between the commercial agora and the thermal baths of the theater, the original structure is Hellenistic but has undergone successive interventions. It is a theater with a "Greek scheme", that is, with the cavea that goes beyond the semicircle. The cavea was further enlarged during the period of Claudius and Nero had the frons scaenae built. It had a capacity of 24,000 spectators, is famous for the episode narrated in the Acts of the Apostles in which Saint Paul was severely challenged by the sellers of statues of Artemis to the cry of "great is the Diana of the Ephesians".

Here we are at the end of another blog, pff was hard but we succeeded.