Aydın

i.The Maeander Valley

Aydın sits in the lower Büyük Menderes basin — the great valley of the river the ancients knew as the Maeander, whose name has given the English language a verb. The Maeander rises near Dinar in inner Anatolia and runs west across two hundred and fifty kilometres of fertile alluvial plain to the Aegean coast near Söke, depositing as it goes the rich soil that has made the basin one of the most productively cultivated landscapes in Türkiye. The valley is broad and flat in its lower reaches, bounded on the north by the Aydın Dağları (the ancient Mesogis) and on the south by the Karıncalı Dağları (the ancient Mount Latmos), with the eastern approaches rising toward the Anatolian plateau and the western mouth opening into the Aegean opposite the islands of Samos and Patmos. The Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism calls the basin the "Valley of Civilisations" (Uygarlıklar Vadisi), and the name is accurate: few stretches of Mediterranean country carry as dense a concentration of major archaeological sites.

The province has been continuously inhabited from the Neolithic. The earliest excavated settlement is the Deştepe (Dedekuyusu) Höyük, within the modern municipal boundaries of Aydın city, with ceramic finds dating to around 4500 BCE. The rock paintings discovered by the German archaeologist Anneliese Peschlow in the Beşparmak Dağları (the ancient Latmos) push the cultural history of the basin back ten thousand years. By the late Bronze Age the country was within the Hittite cultural sphere; the Hittite documents identify the major Aegean coastal cities of the western Anatolian seaboard by names that are still recognisable in modern form: Apasa (Ephesus, in modern İzmir province), Milawanda (Miletus), Pariyana (Priene), İlyalanda (Alinda), Waliwanda (Alabanda).

The Valley of Civilisations — a single river basin holding Tralles, Aphrodisias, Miletus, Priene, Nysa, and Magnesia ad Maeandrum.

ii.Tralles: Argive and Thracian Foundation

The city the Romans called Tralleis (Latin Tralles) is the predecessor of modern Aydın. According to the geographer Strabo (himself a careful authority on western Anatolian history, writing around the turn of the millennium), Tralleis was founded jointly by colonists from Argos in the Peloponnese and a Thracian people who migrated south across the Aegean. The dual origin places the foundation in the 8th or 7th century BCE, in the broader wave of Greek colonisation that established the Ionian and Aeolian cities along the entire western Anatolian seaboard. The city's pre-Greek name, preserved in some sources, was Atria. The site itself — a natural acropolis on the southern flank of the Mesogis range, overlooking the Maeander valley from the north — had been continuously occupied for centuries before the Greek settlement.

iii.The Persian Period and Alexander

From the 6th century BCE onward, Tralles came under Persian Achaemenid rule, as part of the larger conquest of western Anatolia by Cyrus and his successors. In 400 BCE, the Spartan general Thibron campaigned across the Maeander valley in an attempt to detach the western Anatolian Greek cities from Persian control — the war Xenophon describes in his Hellenica; he reached Tralles but could not take it. The city was finally liberated from Persian dominion by Alexander the Great in 334 BCE, during his initial sweep through western Anatolia after the Battle of the Granicus.

iv.Pergamene and Roman Tralles

After Alexander's death Tralles passed through the hands of successive Hellenistic powers — Lysimachus, the Seleucids, finally the Pergamene kingdom. After the Romans defeated the Seleucid king Antiochus III at the Battle of Magnesia in 190 BCE (the engagement was fought near Magnesia ad Sipylum in modern Manisa, not at Magnesia ad Maeandrum in modern Aydın), Tralles passed to the Pergamene kingdom of Eumenes II. In 129 BCE, with the rest of the Pergamene inheritance, Tralles became part of the Roman province of Asia.

The defining moment of Roman Tralles came in 26 BCE, when a violent earthquake destroyed the city. The emperor Augustus, in a notable act of imperial patronage, financed the reconstruction in full and renamed the rebuilt city Caesarea in his own honour. The Augustan name persisted alongside the older "Tralles" through the 1st century CE, then gradually faded; by the time of Nero the city was again routinely called Tralles. Roman Tralles was substantial: the literary sources describe it as one of the major centres of the Maeander valley, with a famous school of sculpture (the "Tralles type" of small sculpture was a recognised export), a major commercial activity, and a strong civic life. The site was largely abandoned in late antiquity, and the great bulk of its built fabric was reused as building material for medieval and Ottoman Aydın; what survives — including the imposing arches of the Üçgözler, a section of what may have been a public bath or gymnasium — gives only a partial sense of the Roman city's scale.

v.The Archaeological Province — Aphrodisias, Miletus, Priene, Nysa, Magnesia

Aydın province carries one of the densest concentrations of major ancient cities anywhere in Türkiye. Five sites in particular justify the "Valley of Civilisations" framing:

Aphrodisias — in the Karacasu district, ninety kilometres east-south-east of Aydın city, the great Carian sanctuary of Aphrodite. The city flourished from the late Hellenistic period through the Byzantine, with a celebrated sculpture school whose marble craftsmen exported finished works across the entire empire. The site preserves an extraordinary ensemble: the Temple of Aphrodite (later converted to a basilica), the Sebasteion (the Julio-Claudian imperial cult complex with its spectacular relief sculpture, now in the Aphrodisias Museum), the Tetrapylon gate, the Stadium (one of the most complete in the Greco-Roman world), and the Bouleuterion. UNESCO World Heritage Site, 2017.

Miletus — in the Didim/Söke district near the Aegean coast, the great Ionian city that fronts the lower Maeander. Miletus was the senior city of the Ionian League, the home of Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Hecataeus (the founders of Greek philosophy and historiography), and the colonising mother-city of dozens of secondary settlements across the Black Sea and southern Italy. The site preserves the great 4th-century BCE theatre, the agora, the Faustina Baths, the Delphinion sanctuary, and the line of the Hellenistic city walls.

Priene — on the northern flank of Mount Mycale (modern Samsun Dağı), in the Söke district, a model of the Hellenistic city laid out on a grid plan by the architect Hippodamus's pupils. Priene is the most complete surviving example of a Hippodamian-grid Greek city anywhere in Anatolia: streets, houses, market, council house, theatre, gymnasium, and the great Temple of Athena Polias (architect Pytheos, financed by Alexander the Great in 334 BCE), all visible in plan and largely in elevation.

Nysa — in the Sultanhisar district, twenty-five kilometres east of Aydın city, a Hellenistic foundation by the Seleucids that became a Roman administrative centre. The site is built on either side of a deep gorge that splits the city in two, with the gorge bridged by Roman vaulted constructions. The library of Nysa was famous in antiquity. The adjacent Akharaka sanctuary preserves the Plutonion-cave shrine to Pluto and Persephone, with the toxic-gas vents that gave it its mythological reputation.

Magnesia ad Maeandrum — in the Germencik district, just west of Aydın city, an Ionian city famous in antiquity for the great Temple of Artemis Leukophryene, designed by the architect Hermogenes in the late 3rd century BCE and one of the canonical works of Hellenistic temple architecture. The site preserves the temple, the agora, the theatre, the stadium, and the city walls.

Beyond these five, the province carries dozens of smaller ancient sites — Alinda, Alabanda, Amyzon, Mastaura, Antiochia ad Maeandrum, Harpasa, Orthosia, Phygela — each with its own surviving Hellenistic and Roman remains.

vi.The Menteşids, the Aydınids, and the Ottoman Conquest (1426)

Roman Tralles continued through the Byzantine period as an important bishopric of the Asia Minor metropolitan see. The city was taken from the Byzantines in 1282 by Menteşe Bey, founder of the Menteşid Beylik, the Aegean coastal Turkic principality that controlled the lower Maeander valley and the south-western Anatolian coast through the late 13th and early 14th centuries. The Turkish settlers found the Roman city's hilltop site protected and beautiful, and gave it a new name: Güzelhisar — "the Beautiful Castle." Rather than living within the old Roman city, however, they built a new settlement on the necropolis at the southern foot of the ancient acropolis. This new Güzelhisar is the foundation of modern Aydın.

Around 1308, the western Anatolian Turkmen leader Mehmed Bey founded the Aydınid Beylik (Aydınoğulları), named for him, with Birgi (in modern İzmir province) as its capital and Güzelhisar/Aydın as a principal city. The Aydınid Beylik became a substantial maritime power, with a fleet that raided across the Aegean from Smyrna (modern İzmir) and harassed the Latin Christian shipping of the eastern Mediterranean. The famous "Aydın Gazi" tradition — exemplified by Umur Bey of Aydın (d. 1348), the great Turkic naval commander whom Byzantine emperors employed as a mercenary admiral — comes from this period.

The Aydınid Beylik was absorbed by the rising Ottoman state in stages through the 14th and early 15th centuries. After Timur's 1402 defeat of Bayezid I temporarily restored the beyliks, the final Ottoman incorporation came in 1426, under Sultan Murad II. Aydın became a sancak of the Anadolu Eyalet, governed from Kütahya, and would remain so through the long Ottoman peace.

vii.Ottoman Güzelhisar and the Aydın Vilayet

Through the Ottoman centuries Güzelhisar — increasingly called Aydın or Aydın-Güzelhisarı from the late 19th century onwards, to distinguish it from another Güzelhisar near Menemen — was a substantial agricultural and commercial centre. The administrative status rose progressively: a sancak in 1811, the centre of the new Aydın Eyalet in 1826 (with the Aydın eyalet covering most of western Anatolia including İzmir and Manisa), a müşirlik under Mahmud II, an eyalet after the Tanzimat, and a full vilayet in 1867. The Aydın Vilayet of the late Ottoman period was one of the most important provinces of the empire, with İzmir as its great commercial capital and Aydın itself as a secondary administrative seat.

The single most consequential 19th-century development was the railway. The İzmir–Aydın line, built by the British-financed Ottoman Railway Company, was opened in stages between 1856 and 1866 and was the first railway built in Anatolia. The line transformed the Maeander valley economy: figs, raisins, cotton, olives, and tobacco from Aydın province could now move quickly to İzmir for export, and the Maeander basin became one of the most heavily commercialised agricultural regions of the late Ottoman empire. The railway also brought European merchants, technicians, and missionaries to Aydın in unprecedented numbers; the late-19th-century city carried a substantial Greek, Armenian, and Levantine European population alongside the Turkish majority.

viii.The Greek Occupation (1919–22) and Liberation

The Greek army landed at İzmir on 15 May 1919 in the immediate aftermath of the Ottoman defeat in the First World War, and from İzmir advanced east into the Anatolian interior. Aydın was occupied by Greek forces on 27 May 1919. Turkish irregular forces — the early Kuva-yı Milliye units that would become the foundation of the national army — briefly retook the city on 30 June 1919, fighting one of the first significant engagements of what would become the War of Independence. The Greeks reoccupied the city within days, however, and Aydın remained under Greek occupation for the next three years.

The 1919–22 occupation caused extensive damage to the historic core of the city, including the destruction of substantial parts of the Roman Tralles archaeological zone. After the Great Offensive broke the Greek front at Afyonkarahisar (26–30 August 1922; see the Afyonkarahisar essay), the Turkish army swept west across the Maeander valley and into the Aegean coast. Aydın was liberated on 7 September 1922, two days before the Turkish army entered İzmir on 9 September 1922 and brought the War of Independence effectively to a close. The annual commemoration of 7 September as the city's Kurtuluş Günü is still observed.

ix.The Republic, Adnan Menderes, and the Figs

Aydın became one of the founding provinces of the Republic of Türkiye in 1923. The most distinguished Republican-era Aydınlı is Adnan Menderes (1899–1961), born in the village of Çakırbeyli in Aydın province, who served as the Prime Minister of Türkiye from 1950 to 1960 as the founder and leader of the Demokrat Parti. Menderes presided over a decade of rapid economic and infrastructural development — the major rural road-building, the agricultural mechanisation, the expansion of credit to the countryside — that transformed the Republic's relationship with the Anatolian peasantry. He was overthrown in the military coup of 27 May 1960, tried at the Yassıada trials, convicted, and executed by hanging on 17 September 1961. His remains were transferred to Istanbul in 1990; the modern Aydın Adnan Menderes University (founded 1992) carries his name, and the great Adnan Menderes International Airport (ADB) at İzmir, the principal Aegean air gateway, was named for him in 1987.

The Aydın provincial economy rests on agriculture — chiefly figs, olives, cotton, and tobacco. Aydın incir (the Aydın fig) is one of the great Geographic Indications of the Turkish Republic, registered with the Türk Patent ve Marka Kurumu and recognised by the European Union: the dried-fig production of the Aydın–Söke–Nazilli plain accounts for roughly seventy per cent of the world's commercial fig supply. The annual fig harvest in August and September is the great seasonal event of the province. Olive oil from the Aydın foothills and cotton from the lower Maeander plain complete the agricultural picture.

x.Visiting Aydın Today

Aydın is reached by the high-speed train and the conventional rail line from İzmir (an hour and a half), or by long-distance bus from anywhere on the Aegean coast. The city is the natural base for the Maeander archaeological circuit. The principal sites are spread across the province: Aphrodisias is ninety kilometres east; Nysa is twenty-five kilometres east; Miletus and Priene are sixty to seventy kilometres west, both close to Söke; Magnesia ad Maeandrum is fifteen kilometres west, just outside Germencik. Allow at least three days for a serious visit, or four to include Söke, Didim (with the great Apollo Temple at Didyma), and the coastal beach resorts of Altınkum and Kuşadası (the latter administratively in Aydın province and the principal port of access for cruise visits to Ephesus).

The Aydın table reflects the country: figs in every preparation, olive-oil-based dolma and salads, the meze table of the Aegean coast, Aydın kabağı (the Aydın squash, a regional specialty), and the local olive oils that carry their own Geographic Indications. For the broader Aegean cuisine, see Anatolian Tables; for recipes, our sister site TurkishCooking.com.