Agora of Smyrna

The Agora of Smyrna lies in the centre of Izmir, in the Namazgah quarter, and remains one of the few surviving public squares of the ancient city beneath the modern buildings. The square was laid out in Hellenistic times, after Alexander the Great, according to legend, ordered Smyrna to be moved to the slopes of Mount Pagos. The earthquake of 178 destroyed the complex, and the empress Faustina, wife of Marcus Aurelius, rebuilt it at her own expense. From that reconstruction there survive the tiers of vaulted basements of the basilica, standing on massive piers: galleries more than 160 metres long stretch beneath the square and still drain groundwater through the ancient channels. Above, rows of columns of the northern portico have survived, along with arches bearing scratched graffiti, among which drawings of ships and one of the earliest known depictions of the Christian cross were found. In Ottoman times the plot was occupied by a cemetery, so the city never built over it, and in the 1930s the place was cleared for excavations, which continue to this day.

On the map