Anemon Hotel Aydin

Aydin-Muğla Road 3 Km, Aydın

GBP 35 - 70

guest review score: N/A

The 4-star Anemon Aydin offers great facilities 3 km from the centre of Aydin. Enjoy free wireless internet, outdoor swimming pool, and great settings… More

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Aydın: Guide

Aydın (Turkish province of the same name (Aydın Province).

Early history

In ancient Greek sources, the name of the city is given as "Anthea" and "Euanthia". During the Roman and Byzantine Empire|Byzantine Empires as "Tralles" or "Tralleis", and for a time as "Caesarea" (also "Kaisareia").

Strabo describes Tralles as being founded by Argives and Trallians, a Thracian tribe. With the rest of Lydia, the city fell to the Persian Empire. After its success against Athens in the Peloponnesian War, Sparta unsuccessfully sought to take the city from the Persians. In 334 BC, Tralles surrendered to Alexander the Great without resistance and therefore was not sacked. Antigonus held the city from 313 BC|313 to 301 BC. The Seleucids held the city down to 190 BC when it fell to Pergamon. From 133 BC|133 to 129 BC, the city supported Aristonicus, a pretender to the Pergamene throne, against the Romans. After the Romans defeated him, they revoked the city's right to mint coins.

Tralles was a conventus for a time under the Roman Republic, but Ephesus later took over that position. The city was taken by rebels during the Mithridatic War during which many Roman inhabitants were killed. Tralles suffered greatly from an earthquake in 26 BC.Augustus provided funds for its reconstruction after which the city thanked him by renaming itself Caesarea.

Strabo describes the city as a prosperous trading center in antiquity. Strabo lists famous residents of the city, including Pythodorus (native of Nysa), and orators Damasus Scombrus and Dionysocles. Several centuries later, Anthemius of Tralles, architect of the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, was born in Tralles.

An early bishop Polybius (fl. ca. 105) is attested by a letter from Saint Ignatius of Antioch to the church at Tralles. The city was officially Christianized, along with the rest of Caria, early after the conversion of Constantine I (emperor)|Constantine, at which time the see was confirmed. Among the recorded bishops are: Heracleon (431), Maximus (451), Uranius (553), Myron (692), Theophylactus (787), Theophanes and Theopistus both ninth century, and John (1230). Tralles remains a titular see of the Roman Catholic Church (Tralles in Asia or Trallianus in Asia); the seat is vacant following the death of the last bishop in 1974.

After the Battle of Malazgirt in 1071, the Byzantine Empire was in full retreat throughout Anatolia. The Seljuk Turks|Seljuks took Tralles and it was integrated into the Sultanate of Rüm. Manuel I Comnenus retook the city for Byzantium in the later half of the twelfth century. It remained Byzantine until it was finally taken by the Turks in 1282.

Turkish history

Aydın is named after Aydın Bey, the founder of the Anatolian Turkish Beyliks|Anatolian Turkish Beylik of Aydınoğlu in 1307 and the conqueror of the region. The Beylik of Aydınoğlu ruled the lands north of Menderes up to and including İzmir. The principality has been taken over by the rising Ottoman Empire, for the first time shortly before the Battle of Ankara between the Ottomans and Tamerlane in 1402, and then definitely in 1425, Tamerlane having given back the province to the the sons of Aydın in the interval.

Aydın was the principal administrative center for the region under the Ottomans till Muğla provinces, as well as the southern portion of the İzmir Province. Inside that Vilayet, the Sandjak ('district' in the Ottoman administrative system) of Aydın used to correspond more or less to today's Aydın Province. In 1850, the provincial seat has been moved to İzmir, which had started to outgrow Aydın city in size as it became a booming port of international trade, although the province's name remained as the Vilayet of Aydın till the foundation of the Republic of Turkey.

Aydın still benefits from its location at the center of the fertile Menderes valley. Important increases in the population, parallel to the traditional port of the region, İzmir, but more modest in pace, has taken place in the 19th century According to British company connecting Aydın to Smyrna (now publisher=Railway Gazette International|accessed=[[2006-05-29
. There is an imposing train station in the city dating from the same period.

Greek Occupation of Aydın

During the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922), violent fighting took place in and around Aydın, especially in the beginning phase of the war, during the Battle of Aydın between 27 June and 4 July 1919. The civilian population of the city, Turkish as well as Greek, suffered heavy casualties and Aydın remained in ruins till it was re-captured by the Turkish army on 7 September 1922. Names of such resistants as the efe Yörük Ali, who were based in the surrounding mountains and conducted a guerilla warfare against the Greek army, became heroes in Turkey. Aydın Greeks have been exchanged with Turks living in Greece under the 1923 agreement for Exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey|Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations between the two countries.

Aydın today

The last decades saw Aydın going way beyond its traditional role as hub for agricultural products, developping a diversified economy increasingly based on services. The opening in 1992 of Adnan Menderes University, named after a favorite son of Aydın, Adnan Menderes, List of Prime Ministers of Turkey|Turkey's prime minister during the 1950's, as well as of other notable educational institutions, also led to the city's becoming a attractive center for studies, aided in this by the hospitable environment at only an hour's drive from the sea-shore. In fact, many residents of Aydın typically have summer houses and investments in or around such centers of tourism as Kuşadası, Güzelçamlı and Didim. The construction of the six-lane İzmir-Aydın motorway also enhanced Aydın's connections to İzmir, Turkey's second portuary center, reducing the ride between the two cities also to an hour's drive, and to shorter still for the international Adnan Menderes Airport served by the same motorway.

But its dominance, within both the Turkey|Turkish market and abroad, in the production of a number of agricultural products still identifies Aydın Province. Among these products, Common Fig|figs (ficus carica) undoubtedly occupy the most notable place. The very name by which the fruit was called in the world markets was "Smyrna figs" till recently, due to the preponderance of figs exported from İzmir over other species of the genus, upon which the term "Smyrna figs" became synonymous with the fig itself. And İzmir gave its name to the fruit solely for being the center for the wholesale trading and the exports, while the fruit is traditionally cultivated and processed in Aydın and its depending districts. The term used within Turkey is "Aydın figs" (Aydın inciri). Inside Turkey's yearly production of roughly 50,000 tons of dried figs, the share incumbent on provinces other than Aydın remains insignificant For comparison, the world's second and the third largest producers of dried figs, namely Greece and California, each produce around 12,500 tons per year. Since Aydın dominates the Turkish market in figs, the province also soars over these two producers by almost four-fold. , and in present day, the sales are also being managed and handled from Aydın self. Within Aydın Province, the best figs are reputed to be grown in Atça.

Footnotes

References

Blue Guide, Turkey, The Aegean and Mediterranean Coasts (ISBN 030304892), pp. 353-54.
Richard Talbert, Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World (ISBN 069103169X), p. 61.

External links

This "Travel Guide" section is drawn from the Wikipedia article "Aydın". We hope you will edit and improve it. It is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

Aydın: Guide, Hotels, Map & Photos