Klazomenai Archaeological Site

Klazomenai sits on the coast of the Urla-Çeşme peninsula, facing the Gulf of Izmir. It was one of the twelve Ionian cities and a member of the Ionian League. The story starts at Limantepe, where people lived from about 4000 BC, though the city itself was founded in the Iron Age.

In the Geometric period, between about 900 and 650 BC, people lived in apsidal and rectangular houses, and in the 7th century BC they surrounded their town with a wall. Persian occupation around 546 BC interrupted the settlement, but people returned around 525 to 520 BC under milder Persian rule. Olive-oil workshops and the spread of housing show growing prosperity in the last quarter of the 6th century BC.

After the Ionian Revolt of 499 BC, the city was continued on the island of Karantina as an island town. In the first half of the 4th century BC, a group without Athenian sympathies founded a new grid-plan city on the mainland at Limantepe called Khyton, but it was abandoned around 350 BC. After that the Klazomenians used the mainland only for farming.

This is a site for those who enjoy reading a landscape.