This concludes my series of four long posts about my adventures last year in Smyrna, or Izmir, the most beautiful city in Turkey. Here is a brief track-back for those of you who missed...
Here we are with the last post of my Great Smyrniote adventure. In my last day in Izmir, I had a chance to visit one of the most paradoxical structures in the entire city. This withered structure, right behind the building in the center with three windows, is nothing less than the house of Sabbatai Sevi.
The area containing the house was normally protected with a wire fence, but I found a way to sneak in through a good-sized hole in the fence.
It's hard to believe that this building is more than four hundred years old!
I found two dark hole-like entrances at the ground level, but I couldn't crawl into any of them.
A narrow stairwell leads up to the rooms above.
This chamber, colored in a various layers of faded green, blue and white paint, was one of the largest enclosed rooms of the house. Until recently this building was inhabited by Gypsy or Kurdish squatters from the nearby Kadifekale neighborhood. In the last few years, the squatters have been evicted and the house was reclaimed as a part of the Smyrniote Agora restoration program.
What's even stranger is that people have been reported to visit this site and light candles in it. One anecdote I've heard of recounts people from America coming all the way to this house and praying in it. Weird. I guess in a way, the Sabbatean heritage lives on.
Right next to the "blue room" lies a half-collapsed terrace with yet another staircase leading up to the upper floor.
On the upper floor is the famous "chamber of the eyes," which houses these bizarre, face-like arrangement of windows, doors and alcoves.
Is this a case of genuine, anthropomorphic architecture? Or just simple 17th century lack-of-planning?
More details from the "chamber of the eyes".
My expedition of Sabbatai Sevi's house came to an end when I walked up to the roof of the building and saw a nice vista of the Agora unfolding below. It was this roof that Sabbatai Sevi supposedly ascended to the skies, levitating during his intense meditations.
The Great Smyrniote Adventure, which has been the subject of my past three posts, shows no signs of stopping. This week, let's go on a trip to the Agora of Smyrna, which has been the city's center in the Classical Era. With the modern expansion of the city into the seaside and beyond, the Agora has been surrounded by a rather nasty neighborhood of Kurdish immigrants called Kadifekale.
Despite its fall from grace, the Agora is still in use as an open air museum, and preserves layers upon layers of Izmir's (or Smyrna's) history from the Antiquity, to the Ottomans, the Graeco-Turkish war of 1921-22 and beyond.
Some of the ancient arcades where hellenistic merchants used to do business have been lovingly restored to their "original" status.
More interesting than the Classical ruins, however, is the collection of Muslim graves from the Ottoman centuries, when the Agora used to be a graveyard. Unfortunately, they are not kept in a tidy state.
Elsewhere, the older Ottoman graves are decorated with beautiful and usually mystifying patterns. These people may have been too scared to paint human figures, but they were certainly no strangers to art and beauty.
I couldn't decide whether this was an antique pattern or a later, Ottoman copy of one.
This was one of the most atypical Ottoman graves I saw in the agora. It has a curiously neoclassical, even baroque pattern and an obelisk-like column instead of the usual headstone. I wish I could read the inscriptions.
The weirdness goes on. Later on, I came across a Muslim grave with an unmistakable star of David on its side. Was this a sign of the Sabbateans, the Muslim-mimicking community of mystical Jews, whose trail had led me to this particular trip to Smyrna? Maybe.
Or maybe not? The six-pointed star, it turned out, was also a very popular pattern in Muslim art and architecture between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries. Here, we can see an engraving in the nearby Kemeraltı district that has mosques, the names God and six-pointed stars side by side. So, these images might be anachronistic only to our modern eyes.
As I left the Agora through the ancient gates still flanked by disfigured statues of lions, my mind was on only one thing...
... were those graves those of "normal" Mohammedans? Or were they genuine graves of the Sabbateans? What was the significance of that weird "obelisk grave?" Here, by the way, is one of the ancient lion statues, its face disfigured by the scars of time.
I had lunch in a cheap nearby restaurant. On its doorstep I noticed a simillar, albeit more hysterical modern "agoran lion" made out of cast concrete.
My adventures in Smyrna continue this week with this selection of pictures from the Havra street, near the historic, but currently dilapidated Kemeraltı district.
Once a populous Jewish neighborhood, this small bundle of streets still has more than a dozen synagogues dotting every corner. This is the Sinyora Giveret Synagogue.
Izmir still has a large population of Jewish citizens, but they have long since moved away into more prosperous neighborhoods. Their temples, all dating from the 1500s or the 1600s, are still in active use. This is the Algaze, or Algazi Synagogue.
There's literally a synagogue behind every street corner. This is the Hevra Synagogue.
Another view of the Hevra Synagogue, showing its centuries-old walls.
The Ets Hayim, with surreal checkered tiles surrounding its door. It's a pity I couldn't get into any of them.
This imposing edifice was one of the oldest in the neighborhood. Informally known as the "Portuguese Synagogue," it was built in the early 1500s by Sephardi immigrants escaping oppression in Portugal.
The taste of history: Old, weird and cool at the same time.
A short way from the street of synagogues lies this house, purportedly that of a wealthy Jewish merchant that left no heirs. What an amazing, beautiful building. If I ever get to be rich enough, I'd like to buy, renovate and live in such a structure.
In my last post, I showed you a selection of historic Greek houses from Smyrna. Here is the continuation of my adventures in that city, as I accidentally witnessed the death of one such historical house, this time in the Kemeralti district. At around 3.00 AM, me and my friends were drinking on the slopes of Varyant, a neighborhood with an amazing vista of the city. Suddenly, we noticed a plume of smoke wafting through the distant air.
Being drunk and very excited, we quickly rode up to the point the smoke was coming from. An disturbingly bright light illuminated the narrow, darkened streets.
The source of the light soon became visible: Fire. One of the abandoned Greek mansions was burning, exploding into the night. Firefighters were already at work, hopelessly trying to extinguish the blaze. Here are some of the Hieromyus Bosch - style night shots I took.
At one point one of the front walls collapsed, showering everywhere with sparks and cinders.
It wasn't long before a second fire engine arrived on the scene to combat the fire.
We did not stay to watch the inevitable outcome. Overcome with sadness of watching a landmark disappear, but also a perverted, primal pleasure at having survived a fiery adventure, we rode off into the Smyrniote night.
Last spring, I took a completely out-of-the-blue trip to Smyrna, or Izmir. By any name, this is one of the most beautiful cities in the Eastern Mediterranean, and certainly the most livable, human-friendly city in all of Turkey.
Smyrna owes much of her beauty and splendor to the long-departed Greeks of Anatolia, who in the relatively tolerant atmosphere of the late-era Ottoman Empire transformed the city into a cosmopolitan paradise.
After the Turkish reconquest and the following Greco-Turkish population exchange, Smyrna became Izmir and lost a great deal of her metropolitan beauty. Even in its current state, however, it is a beautiful city, and the people of Smyrna are still the most educated, liberated and westernized citizens of Turkey.
Many of these houses are currently used as cafes, restaurants, pubs, bars and clubs. At weekend nights the streets fill up with people, making Smyrna all the more charming and beautiful.
