Teos & Sığacık

Ancient City

The ancient world’s largest Temple of Dionysos and home of history’s first actors’ guild — beside the castle village of Turkey’s first Cittaslow.

Spread among olive groves in the Seferihisar district of İzmir, Teos was known among the Ionian cities as the city of art and wine. At its centre rose the temple dedicated to Dionysos, god of wine and theatre — considered the largest temple to Dionysos in the ancient world. Another detail makes Teos special in history: the guild known as the “Artists of Dionysos” was organised here — remembered as the first known guild (a kind of union) of actors and artists in history. The city is also the birthplace of the famous lyric poet Anacreon.

At the site, the temple remains, theatre, bouleuterion (council house) and traces of two harbours can be explored amid a calm olive-grove landscape. Sığacık, right alongside, is a discovery in itself: a village of narrow streets built inside Ottoman-era castle walls, still lived in today. Seferihisar was the district that received Turkey’s first “Cittaslow” (slow city) title in 2009; Sığacık’s Saturday market, its marina and the cafés within the castle are the loveliest reflection of that culture of slowness. It is far from Bodrum, and fits into multi-day trips toward Ephesus and İzmir.