İzmit and its surroundings sit at a crossing point of the world's important roads, and research has shown people living here from about 3000 BC. The first direct evidence for İzmit itself, continuously inhabited ever since, dates to the 12th century BC. The Phrygians held the region at that time, and then a group of emigrants who had left Megara in Greece looking for somewhere new founded a city they called Astakos, at what is now Başiskele.
Lysimachos of Thrace had Astakos destroyed, and a new city called Nikomedia was founded on the slopes where İzmit now stands. The king who built it, Nikomedes, gave the city his wife's name in 262 BC. As capital of the rising kingdom of Bithynia, Nikomedia became a great Hellenistic city, and it was bequeathed to Rome at the end of the 2nd century BC.
