Guide
Klazomenai was one of the twelve Ionian cities, on the northern shore of the Urla-Çeşme peninsula in the middle of the gulf of İzmir. Its territory is thought to have reached east almost to Smyrna; the temple of Apollo known to have stood near the Agamemnon hot springs at Balçova is accepted as lying within it, its western boundary with Erythrai fell around Hypokremnos, probably at Gülbahçe village, and the land is understood to have extended south to the gulf of Sığacık — each of these an inference rather than a fixed line.
The city was founded in the Iron Age at Limantepe, ground that had been settled since around 4000 BC. In the Geometric period, between 900 and 650 BC, its people lived in apsidal and rectangular houses, and in the seventh century they walled the city. The Archaic settlement was broken by the Persian occupation around 546 BC, but under moderate Persian rule people returned to the old quarters around 525 to 520.
Excavation here has a long and traceable history. The first scientific dig was carried out by the Greek archaeologist G. P. Oikonomos in 1921 and 1922. After work by the Ministry of Culture in 1979 and 1980, excavation resumed in 1981 under Güven Bakır, and since 2007 it has been directed by Yaşar E. Ersoy.
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