Guide
Şirince is a hill village 8 km east of Selçuk, home to an Orthodox Rum community until 1922, whose houses, roughly a hundred years old, have kept the village's old character. Because the land slopes, the houses are lined up in rows along the hillside, and between them stand bakeries, coffeehouses and fountains. Some 200 houses survive from the Rum period. The churches of Aya Yani and Aya Dimitri, both from the 19th century, are only two of the village's historic buildings, and from the village primary school there is a clear view across the houses, gardens and mountains.
Old sources call the village the Ephesus on the mountain. There are several stories about its founding; one tells of villagers freed by their lord who, asked whether the place they wanted to settle was pretty, answered that it was ugly, and so it was named Çirkince. In the 19th century, under Ottoman rule, it was a Rum village of 1800 households that paid its taxes and largely ran its own affairs. After 1922 most of its Rum inhabitants left, and the village came back to life with the settlers who arrived in the population exchange of 1924. Its present name is said to come from the early republic, when the İzmir governor Kazım Dirik Paşa was greeted by the village teacher, Muallim Suat Bey, with a song he had composed, and was so moved that he ordered the name changed to Şirince.
The village market is known for fruit wines, sold in a great many wine houses, and for small stalls where villagers sell their own produce: handicrafts, soap, olive oil, pekmez, honey, jams and souvenirs. The kitchens serve Aegean and Cretan dishes by season, among them radika, sautéed wild greens, şevketi bostan and stuffed courgette flowers. In summer, taste the peaches, and in winter the mandarins; and the old coffeehouse overlooking the village square makes coffee cooked in sand.
Old Rum mansions, guesthouses and boutique hotels offer rooms in the village, which makes it possible to stay a few days and, in the meantime, visit Kayserkaya and the Nesin Matematik Köyü.
When to go
- Climate
- Across İzmir as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 8.9 °C in January to 28 °C in July; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in April, May, September and October; rainfall is heaviest in December (146 mm) and lightest in July (4 mm). Long-term means for 1938-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
