İzmir, Turkey

İzmir is Turkey's third-largest city, with roughly 4.4 million residents living along the Aegean coast. It sits atop the ancient Greek settlement of Smyrna, founded around 3000 BC, and tradition places Homer's birth here in the 8th century BC. Alexander the Great founded Kadifekale, or Velvet Castle, on a 186-metre hill in 334 BC, while the 2002 Agora Open Air Museum preserves the city's 2nd-century-AD Roman forum. The 1675 Hisar Mosque, the largest Ottoman-era mosque in İzmir, stands by a bazaar dating to the 1230s, and a 1922 fire once destroyed the Greek and Armenian quarters.