Things to do
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Agora of Smyrna
The Roman marketplace of Smyrna, first laid out by the Greeks and rebuilt on Marcus Aurelius's orders after the earthquake of 178, with its vaulted basement galleries intact and still carrying water. The Faustina Gate and a Corinthian colonnade stand above ground, beside walls scratched with ancient graffiti. It sits below the Kadifekale slope in the middle of the modern city.
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Asansör
A lift tower built in 1907 by the Jewish banker Nesim Levi Bayraklıoğlu to carry residents and goods up the cliff between two levels of the Karataş quarter, still free to ride. The terrace at the top looks straight down the gulf, and the street leading to it is named for the singer Darío Moreno, who lived on it.
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İzmir Archaeological Museum
The regional collection for the Gulf of İzmir, housed since 1984 in a building in Konak beside the ethnography museum. Statues, busts, tools and cooking wares come from Bronze Age, Greek and Roman sites, among them Bayraklı, the first Smyrna, and Klazomenai, Teos and the wider Ionian coast.
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İzmir Ethnography Museum
A former hospital of 1831, the stone-built St. Roche, holding the crafts and customs of the Aegean province over four storeys, with displays on camel wrestling, felt-making, tin-plating and embroidery. Weapons, jewellery and illustrated manuscripts fill other rooms, admission is free, and it stands next door to the archaeological museum.
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Kemeraltı
The bazaar that filled in the old inner harbour, a covered and open maze of seventeenth-century han courtyards, synagogues, mosques and coffee houses still trading for the city rather than for visitors. Kızlarağası Han is the set piece.
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Konak Square
The square at the centre of the waterfront, marked by the ornate clock tower of 1901 given by Abdul Hamid II and the small tiled Yalı Mosque near it. The governor's mansion that gives it its name and the city hall face the square, and the ferry pier, the bus station and the bazaar entrance are all on it.
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Alsancak
The Levantine quarter behind the northern waterfront, where the Kordon promenade runs along the gulf for about three kilometres. Its inner streets keep rows of older one and two-storey houses, now full of bars, cafés, bookshops and small kitchens busy late into the night, with the port and Alsancak station at its edge.
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Arkas Art Center
A French consular building of 1906 on the Kordon waterfront in Alsancak, restored and opened as a museum in 2011. It shows the Arkas shipping family's collection of more than nine hundred works, European painting among them, alongside touring exhibitions that have included Picasso, and entry is free.
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Kadifekale
The hilltop castle on Mount Pagos above İzmir, where Lysimachos built the first walls after Alexander, though what stands now is medieval. It sits about 2 km inland at 186 metres, reached by bus or a steep walk, and the view at dusk takes in most of the city and the length of the gulf.
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Swissôtel Büyük Efes
The Büyük Efes of 1964, rebuilt behind its garden on Cumhuriyet Square, which opened as the second five-star hotel in Turkey and was the only one in the city until the 1990s. It keeps a deep lawn in front, and both the bazaar and Alsancak are a short walk away.
