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Smyrna:

Founded in the 11th century BC by the Aeolians, a Greek people, the city was seized by the Ionians before 688 BC. Later in the 7th century BC, Smyrna was devastated by the Lydians, a people of Asia Minor. Antigonus I, king of Macedonia, restored the city in the 4th century BC, and subsequently it was fortified and improved by Lysimachus, a general in the service of Alexander the Great. Smyrna was conquered later by the Romans and subsequently became an early center of Christianity, referred to as one of the “seven churches” (see Revelation 1:11).

During the 4th century AD the city was made a part of the Byzantine Empire, and from the 11th to the 15th century was alternately ruled by the Byzantines and the Turks. In 1402 Smyrna was ravaged by Turkic conqueror Tamerlane, and after 1424 belonged to the Ottoman Turks.

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Time goes by quickly when you are reading an encyclopedia. In 2,500 years from its founding until conquest by the Ottomans, Smyrna was a great center of Greek culture and language, although not quite of the rank of Pergamum or Ephesus. In the subsequent 500 years of Ottoman rule it retained much of its "Greekness." This is largely because the Ottoman Empire was through most of its history a multi-cultural empire, with about 1/3 of the people being Christian. Ethnic Greeks, traditionally a coastal people, controlled trade around the "Ottoman Lake", i.e. the eastern Mediterrean.

Only after World War I, the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, and the fight between the New "independent" Turkey and Greece did that change. In a war largely won by Ataturk, the Turkish army seized Smyrna in 1922 and by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne possession was made official. As part of a large population exchange, the Greeks were expelled, as they were from many other parts of coastal Turkey. Smyrna became Izmir.

The ancient city, by todays standards, was very small, and the remains of that are even smaller. The old Greek agora (market place) was located about 600-800 meters (half a mile) from the waterfront and was about 200 meters on a side. Three thousand years later, the commercial center of Izmir, the Konak, ajuts the agora to the north. The excavations and restorations are worthly of an hour walk around. We saw numerous columns and clammoured down into the remains of valuted rooms that were once baths. In physical presence it doesn't rank with Pergamum or even Perge, but it does give you a sense of history.

More of this history is available for up-close viewing at the Archeological museum, located about a mile to the southwest of the agora, on a small hill that gives a view of the Gulf of Izmir. Perhaps the best part is exhibited outdoors: behind the main museum is a restored frieze in white marble that streches about 100 m!