Erythrae

Start with the ground under your feet. Dry earth, loose stones, and fragments of pale marble sit half-buried among the grasses. In summer the air smells of thyme and warm pine. Somewhere below, a fishing boat idles in the bay. Wind comes off the Aegean and moves through the olive trees with a low, steady hiss. This quiet hillside above the village of Ildırı was once a Greek city of real standing. Its name was Erythrae.

Erythrae belonged to the Ionian League, a group of twelve Greek cities along this coast. Ionia was the stretch of western Anatolia where Greek settlers built some of the most influential cities of the ancient world. Ephesus, Miletus and Smyrna were among its neighbours. Erythrae was smaller than the great ports. Even so, it held its place in the league for centuries, and its coins, inscriptions and temples show a confident, prosperous community.

How did the city begin? Here we move from history into legend. The ancient travel writer Pausanias recorded a founding story. Settlers from Crete arrived under a leader named Erythrus. Ionian Greeks came later and mixed with the people already living here. Treat this as a tale the citizens told about themselves, not as a documented event. What archaeology does show is that people lived on this hill and its harbour for a very long time.

Look out across the water now. The large island facing you is Chios, today part of Greece. The strait between this coast and Chios was a busy sea lane in antiquity. Erythrae and Chios were close neighbours, and sometimes rivals. Ships, traders and armies passed through these waters for centuries. From this hill, a lookout could watch every sail that entered the channel. That view explains a great deal about why a city grew here.

In the early fifth century before Christ, the Ionian cities rose against the Persian Empire. The revolt ended in a great sea battle near Miletus, called the Battle of Lade. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, Erythrae sent a small number of ships to fight. The Ionian fleet was defeated. After that, the city passed through many hands — Persian rule, membership in the Athenian alliance, then the kingdoms that followed Alexander the Great, and finally Rome.

Now here is the first surprise. Erythrae was famous across the ancient world for a prophetess. She was known as the Erythraean Sibyl. A sibyl was a woman believed to speak the words of the gods, usually in riddles. Several cities claimed a sibyl of their own. The people of Erythrae insisted that theirs was the true one, and that she was born here. Locals in antiquity even pointed to a cave and a spring connected with her.

The Sibyl's fame did not end with the ancient world. Over a thousand years later, Michelangelo painted her on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. She sits among the prophets, turning the pages of a large book. Millions of visitors to the Vatican look up at her every year. Very few of them know that she belongs to this quiet hillside on the Çeşme peninsula. That thread, from this village to Rome, is part of the place.

Take a moment to climb toward the acropolis, the high, fortified part of the city. A theatre is cut into the slope here. Its stone seats face out toward the sea. Imagine an audience gathering for drama or a public assembly, with the bay and the islands behind the stage. Parts of the seating survive well enough that you can sit where spectators once sat. The acoustics of a Greek theatre were carefully planned, so even quiet words carried.

At the top of the hill stood a temple to Athena, the goddess who protected the city. Little of it remains standing. But this summit was the religious heart of Erythrae. Excavations here have recovered pottery, small offerings and building fragments. They show that people worshipped on this spot over many centuries. Stand still for a moment and turn in a full circle. You can see the harbour, the village, the farmland and the open sea all at once.

The second surprise is the scale of the city walls. Erythrae was enclosed by a long circuit of stone fortifications. Sections of these walls still run across the countryside, far beyond the hilltop. Many visitors see only the theatre and miss them entirely. Look for long lines of fitted stone blocks running through the fields and scrub. Their length tells you that the ancient city was far larger than the modern village below.

Systematic excavation of the site began in the 1960s, led by the Turkish archaeologist Ekrem Akurgal. His teams uncovered houses, streets and public buildings. Some homes from the Roman period had decorated floors and rooms set around courtyards. Much of the ancient city, however, is still under the soil, the olive groves and the village itself. Erythrae is not a fully cleared site. It is a working landscape where farming and archaeology sit side by side.

That brings us to Ildırı. The village name is believed to come from a later form of the old Greek name. Some village houses use ancient stones in their walls. Look closely at doorways and garden walls and you may spot a carved block or a column drum. Life here is slow. Fishermen mend nets, cats sleep in the shade, and small restaurants serve fish beside the water. The ancient city and the modern village share the same harbour.

Before you leave, find a spot on the hill and look down at the bay. The light changes the colour of the water from silver to deep blue as the day moves on. Listen for the wind, the boats, perhaps a rooster in the village. These are the same hills and the same sea the people of Erythrae knew. As you walk back down, watch the stones by the path. Some of them were shaped by hands more than two thousand years ago.