16 Facts About Smyrna

Smyrna was a Greek city located at a strategic point on the Aegean coast of Anatolia.

Old Smyrna was the initial settlement founded around the 11th century BC, first as an Aeolian settlement, and later taken over and developed during the Archaic Period by the Ionians.

Smyrna proper was the new city which residents moved to as of the fourth century BC and whose foundation was inspired by Alexander the Great.

Old Smyrna was located on a small peninsula connected to the mainland by a narrow isthmus at the northeastern corner of the inner Gulf of Izmir, at the edge of a fertile plain and at the foot of Mount Yamanlar.

New Smyrna developed simultaneously on the slopes of the Mount Pagos and alongside the coastal strait, immediately below where a small bay existed until the 18th century.

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Core of the late Hellenistic and early Roman Smyrna is preserved in the large area of Izmir Agora Open Air Museum at this site.

Smyrna was among the cities that claimed Homer as a resident.

Smyrna was located at the mouth of the small river Hermus and at the head of a deep arm of the sea that reached far inland.

Meles River, which flowed by Smyrna, is famous in literature and was worshiped in the valley.

Finally, Alyattes conquered the city and sacked it, and though Smyrna did not cease to exist, the Greek life and political unity were destroyed, and the polis was reorganized on the village system.

The ruined acropolis of the ancient city, the "crown of Smyrna", had been on a steep peak about 380 metres high, which overhangs the northeast extremity of the gulf.

Smyrna is shut in on the west by a hill now called Deirmen Tepe, with the ruins of a temple on the summit.

Polycarp was not only instructed by apostles, and conversed with many who had seen Christ, but was, by apostles in Asia, appointed bishop of the Church in Smyrna…always taught the things which he had learned from the apostles, and which the Church has handed down, and which alone are true.

Hence, apparently the church in Smyrna was one of the churches that Tertullian felt had real apostolic succession.

Timur's conquest was only temporary, but Smyrna was recovered by the Turks under the Aydin dynasty after which it became Ottoman, when the Ottomans took over the lands of Aydin after 1425.

Occupation of Smyrna came to an end when the Turkish army of Kemal Ataturk entered the city on September 9,1922, at the end of the Greco-Turkish War.