Aydın today

Recent decades have seen Aydın going beyond its traditional role as hub for agricultural products, and developing a diversified economy increasingly based on services. One event in this process was the opening in 1992 of Adnan Menderes University, named after a favorite son of Aydın, Adnan Menderes, Turkey's prime minister during the 1950s. The economy is aided by the city's location, only an hour's drive from the sea-shore. In fact, many residents of Aydın typically have summer houses and investments in or around such centers of tourism as Kuşadası, Güzelçamlı and Didim. The construction of the six-lane İzmir-Aydın motorway also shortened the journey from Aydın to İzmir, Turkey's second portuary center, to less than an hour, and less still to the international Adnan Menderes Airport.

But still the city has a quiet country market town feel to it and its dominance, within both the Turkish market and abroad, in the production of a number of agricultural products, particularly figs, still identifies Aydın Province, and most of this trade is managed and handled from Aydın itself.

Aydın city centre is small, centred on one palm-lined avenue of shops and cafes, and a maze of narrow side streets, dotted with orange trees. The people are traditional and family-oriented, so there is little night life, or cultural amenities for young people, although presumably now they have a university this will change. There are a number of mosques, high schools, dersane (private courses cramming students for the university entrance exams) and other public buildings. Like all Turkish cities Aydın is now spreading as the middle-classes are leaving their flats in the city for smarter apartments or houses slightly out of town.

[edit] Places of interest

* The Ottoman period mosques of Ramazan Paşa, Süleyman Paşa and Cihanoğlu
* The Byzantine tower and fortifications above the town
* Roman era ruins (of Tralles) including a gymnasium and a theatre
* The statue of Yörük Ali Efe in the town, which was pulled down and remade after public protests that the original statue showed the efe without a moustache.
* Aydın Museum - archaeology, coinage and ethnographic collection