Mudanya's history goes back to the 7th century BC. Its first name was Myrleia, and it was founded by the Kolophonians, one of the twelve Ionian city states.
Where that name came from is argued two ways. Prof. Bilge Umar reads Myrleia as a name surviving from before the Greek migrations, meaning the strait or pass of the great mother goddess. Another study attributes it to a Kolophonian ruler called Myrlios.
The city was destroyed at the beginning of the 3rd century BC, taken and burned by Prusias, king of Bithynia, together with Philip of Macedon. Philip gave the district to his son-in-law, who founded a new city in place of Myrleia and named it Apameia after his wife Apame, Philip's daughter. Apameia became the first Roman colony in Anatolia.
After the defeat of Mithridates of Pontos the city stayed unsettled for a while longer, until the emperor Augustus made it an army base and a Roman colony under the name Colonia Julia Concordia Augusta Apameia. Much later, when the Fourth Crusade took İstanbul in 1204 and a Latin empire was founded, the crusaders came to dominate the Marmara shore and the country around Mudanya. The armistice house where the Mudanya agreement was signed in 1922, the harbour and the coastal villages each have their own page below.
