Izmir

Smyrna’s strategic position in its bay and on the Aegean, and the fertile trade that has characterized the city since its earliest origins, has made its history a tale of conquests and reconquests. conquests and reconquestsexternal dominions and alliances, internal coexistence and expulsions, in some cases not without bloodshed.

The history of Smyrna in antiquity was both rich and turbulent. Founded probably by the by the Leleges sometime in the 4th or 3rd millennium B.C.it was integrated into the Hittite empire during the 2nd millennium B.C., and occupied later and successively by the Aeolians and Ionians.
Su carácter comercial era ya patente para entonces, como demuestran los objetos fenicios encontrados en excavaciones arqueológicas, lo que demuestran el intercambio de productos.
No sería casualidad, por tanto, que en una ciudad tan dinámica y disputada como esta hubiera born the poet Homer (as local experts maintain), the narrator of the Iliad and the Odyssey.

While he was part of the Ionian LeagueSmyrna reached one of its high points, but Smyrna was not left out of the Persian invasion. Persian invasion (6th century BC) and fell under its domination until it was taken by the troops of Alexander the Great. Alexander the Greatto be controlled later by the Seleucids and then fell under the control of the kingdom of Pergamum.

Later, with the exception of some exceptional periods, Smyrna maintained a certain stability and loyalty to Rome. Romethe emerging power in the Mediterranean from the 2nd century BC. Christianity took root in the empire centuries later, Smyrna remained a city of reference, mentioned as one of the seven churches in the Apocalypse of St. John.

Smyrna was a key city during the Byzantine Empire. Byzantine Empirethe ‘heir’ of the Roman.
And for that reason it was coveted (and briefly conquered) by Seljuk Arabs and Turks during the Middle Ages.
But due to the weakness of the empire, with difficulties to defend Constantinople and its nearest territory, Smyrna was taken and controlled by different powers during the 14th century: Cyprus, Venice, the Papal States…

The final conquest by the Ottomans in 1424 Ottomans in 1424 The empire gave Smyrna a new prestige and importance due to its commercial role.
It is for this reason that many Jewsespecially Sephardim emigrants from the Iberian Peninsula after their expulsion in 1492.
Similarly, Venetians, Armenians and other nationalities settled here in the ‘heat’ of its commercial port.

A new impetus came at the end of the 19th centurycentury, when Smyrna became an important important railway node in the west of the country, thus connecting it with the inland valleys of Anatolia and having the United Kingdom as one of its main trading partners through its port.
It was a multicultural city, where more than half of the population was of non-Turkish origin (mainly Greeks, but also Armenians and European Christians), according to some sources.

On the other hand, the 20th century was convulsive and full of sad episodes.
The end of the First World War brought about the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, and Greece took advantage of this to invade the city in 1919, as a prelude to the so-called Turkish War of Independence.
En 1922, la ciudad fue recuperada por los turcos, organizados en torno a la figura de Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
Y eso provocó una dolorosa expulsion of the great majority of the Greek and Armenian populationwith tens of thousands of deaths as a result of a great fire. fire.

In the decades that followed, Smyrna regained some of its splendor: although its population is not as multicultural as it once was, with most of the Jews emigrating to Israel after the creation of that state in mid-century, the city prides itself as being the most westernized in its way of life and in its most recent urbanism, with rising sectors such as tourism and finance.
And all this, without renouncing to Turkish identity elements, such as its great bazaar.