The famous German Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke, who as a young officer served as military adviser in the Ottoman Empire between 1835 and 1839, described Izmir as 'this fascinating corner of the Orient' in one of his letters home. In his eagerness to visit Izmir, Moltke spontaneously leaped on board a steamship bound for Izmir that he saw at the quay in Istanbul. In the letter which he wrote from the ship on 4 August 1836 he described his first sight of Izmir: 'Early in the morning we entered the wide Gulf of Izmir surrounded by high mountain ranges... The mountains were entirely bare, roasted in the sun, but their shapes were exceedingly beautiful. At their foot all along the shores was a green band of cultivated soil, with vineyards, olive groves, mulberry trees and dark cypresses. The villages and houses were of stone with flat roofs. At the end of the gulf the city of Smyrna could be seen climbing like an amphitheatre up the mountain behind.

In the lowest part, at the edge of the sea, behind the ships was a large barracks [Sari Kisla], a gun battery, a kervansaray with many domes, several mosques, and to the left the town of the Franks with its stone buildings. On the second level was the Turkish city proper. If a handful of tiny houses with red roofs, a few mosques and fountains had fallen from the sky, the plan could not have been more jumbled than that of the city. One is astonished that streets and pathways are to be found amongst these heaps of houses. Above all of these rises the ancient fortress of Smyrna Castle.' The rise of Izmir's star in the eastern Mediterranean began in the mid-16th century, when it became an important port in the silk trade. It grew into a lively, cosmopolitan, and exotic port city, with communities of Levantines, Muslims and non-Muslims, and within a century had become one of the most important ports in the Ottoman Empire.

Basmane Station was constructed at the railway terminal in the city. A mains gas network was installed and in 1864 came the first street lighting. The first municipality was established in 1868, and the Kordon esplanade and quay were constructed between 1868 and 1872. Horse-drawn trams were another innovation. Altogether life in cosmopolitan modern Izmir was sophisticated and elegant. In late Ottoman times the city was the second richest after Istanbul, with a per capita income of 1.65 liras, and seventh in terms of public expenditure at 0.58 liras per capita. Yet Izmir was ravaged during the War of Independence, and when the Turkish Republic was founded in 1923 it inherited a city large destroyed by a great fire and whose trade had diminished to a fraction of former levels. That year the exchange of Turkish and Greek populations took place, and later on Levantines also left in large numbers, bringing about a sudden and radical change in the composition of Izmir's population.

Due to major advances in the fields of commerce, industry, culture and tourism, the city had been forced to expand, swallowing up such traditional summer resorts as Kadifekale, Buca, Bornova and Karsiyaka and losing many of the characteristics once associated with Izmir in the proces.

* M. Rifat Akbulut is a lecturer on City and Regional Planning at Mimar Sinan University.