The Izmir issue
Walking Şirince, the Izmir hill village of lace and wine
Walk the sloping bazaar lane, the two free Greek Orthodox churches and the hillside campus where strangers teach mathematics for nothing, and you can be done before the coaches land at 10:00.
By Joris van der Veldeİzmir on foot and by ferry
Şirince's main street is a single sloping cobbled lane under awnings and vine trellises, lined with stalls of handmade lace, olive-oil soap, honey and fruit wine. Coaches start funnelling through it at 10:00 and keep coming until 15:00. The oldest building above it, the basilica of St John the Baptist, dates from 1805.
Walking the bazaar lane before 09:30
Şirince Kapalı Çarşı & Köy Pazarı (the covered bazaar and the village market lanes) is the whole village for most visitors: one steep street with side alleys running off it, whitewashed stone-and-timber Greek houses with wooden shutters on both sides. Browsing costs nothing. Lace, olive-oil soap and jam run ₺100 to ₺400, and bottles of fruit wine ₺250 to ₺600, stacked in rows outside the shopfronts.
Walk it before 09:30. It is a public street with no door policy and nothing to book, and in the hour before the first coach you have the cobbles to yourself.
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Aya Yani and Aziz Dimitrios churches
Aya Yani Kilisesi (Church of St John the Baptist) sits on a terrace above the rooftops, an ochre-and-stone basilica built in 1805 and restored in 1832. Entry is free and unticketed, 08:30 to 17:30. The nave is small, with a round-arched arcade and faded frescoes. The big walled forecourt holds a round stone wishing pool and a smaller inner pool beside a white Virgin Mary statue, coins glinting on the bottom.
Go at opening. The nave is empty then, and the climb up gives the best valley view in the village. Carry a couple of coins if you want to use the pool.
Aziz Dimitrios Kilisesi (the Upper Church) is a five-minute uphill walk from St John's, a 19th-century stone church standing on the bare hill above the village entrance road. The façade is plain and gabled with a bell gable, and the masonry has been restored; it reopened to visitors between 2012 and 2016. Entry is free and unticketed. Its garden café puts chairs under trees looking down over the whole red-tiled village, with tea and coffee at ₺60 to ₺150. That terrace is the cheapest big view in Şirince.
Nesin Mathematics Village and StoA
Nesin Matematik Köyü (Kayser hill, 1 km above the village) is a stone campus where strangers teach mathematics for free. Ali Nesin and Sevan Nişanyan founded it in 2007. Dry-stone buildings and vaulted open-air lecture amphitheatres step down an olive-and-pine hillside, with blackboards built into the stone walls. Students work on stone benches in the open, and the Nişanyan Memorial Library stands among the trees.
It opens 09:00 to 18:00, costs nothing to walk into, and small groups need no booking. Large parties must arrange a time in advance, because this is a working campus with lectures running; keep your voice down anywhere near one. Tea is served at the Bolkepçe refectory, and overnight stays are possible on request.
StoA (Kayserkaya, next door to the mathematics village) is a residency and workshop venue in a madrasa-style courtyard complex, with an arcaded cloister, timber-framed rehearsal halls and an open-air stage, hillside pines and bare rock behind. Its full name is the Beden Sanatları ve Araştırmaları Merkezi, taken in 2022 when it was renamed from Tiyatro Medresesi and widened from theatre to all body-based arts. Dancers rehearse barefoot on the courtyard flagstones.
Nobody minds if you walk in to look at the architecture. Workshops and the AcroYoga festival each May are booked in advance, with passes at ₺1,500 to ₺6,000. Nothing else around Şirince is as quiet or as good to look at, and it is the reason to stay a second day.
Village breakfast and a café at midday
Gülgün Abla'nın Yeri makes the gözleme in front of you. Women roll the dough paper-thin on a low wooden board in an open-air courtyard kitchen and slide it into an outdoor domed oven, and jars of home-set jam, hand-churned butter and home-cured olives are lined up on the table. The breakfast spread runs ₺400 to ₺650 a head, gözleme ₺150 to ₺250. No bookings are taken, so arrive before the coaches. This is the breakfast to pick if you eat only once in the village.
Şirincem Restaurant (220. Sokak) is the busiest table in Şirince, a terraced wooden deck stepping down the hillside under vine shade, valley and rooftops below, live music at night. Copper trays of village-breakfast dishes crowd the small round tables. Breakfast is ₺500 to ₺750 a head and mains ₺350 to ₺700. Book ahead at weekends. The vegetarian and vegan dishes are labelled in English.
Gülten Abla'nın Yeri is a family terrace on the village edge, half-swallowed by greenery, with mismatched chairs and a pine slope filling the view. Thin gözleme comes straight off the sac at ₺120 to ₺220, with bowls of tomato, olives and homemade fries, and breakfast is ₺350 to ₺550. It seats a handful of people and cannot take a coach party. Come here when Şirincem and Gülgün Abla are both full.
Çirkince Helen Cafe has a timber balcony over the bazaar lane and a few tables inside behind a small stone front. Turkish coffee arrives on brass trays, the cake is homemade and the menu is a handwritten blackboard; coffee is ₺70 to ₺140, cake and snacks ₺120 to ₺300. The kitchen is vegetarian-friendly. Sit here through the midday heat. The name is the village's old one, Çirkince, meaning ugly, which is what the villagers called the place to keep outsiders away.
Dinner and the wine houses
Kırkınca Arşipel Restaurant stands 50 m from the Kırkınca stone houses, a stone-walled dining room with an open terrace, olive-wood tables and the valley dropping away beyond the parapet. The cooking is the most serious in the village: şevket-i bostan with lamb, the Kırkınca kebabı, almond-cream erişte, their own olive oil poured from unlabelled bottles. Mains run ₺500 to ₺900, and a meal with local wine ₺1,200 to ₺1,800 a head. Reserve on +90 232 898 31 33. Live acoustic music plays on Friday and Saturday nights, and the wine list comes out of their own Kırkınca Şarap Evi in the covered bazaar.
Şirince Artemis Restaurant and Wine House (the old stone schoolhouse, Taş Mektep, on 220. Sokak) keeps a working winery in the basement under its tall shuttered schoolroom windows. The mulberry wine is made down there. Stuffed courgette flowers and cherry-leaf dolma come out to a long terrace where cats sleep on the chairs. Mains are ₺350 to ₺700, wine ₺150 to ₺250 a glass and ₺350 to ₺700 a bottle. It runs 08:00 to 00:00 in rooms that were classrooms; the number is +90 232 898 32 40.
Kıvırcık Şarap Evi is a narrow bazaar-lane shopfront crammed with unlabelled bottles of dark mulberry, plum and blueberry wine. The same couple have run it for more than twenty years. A tasting of five or six fruit wines is free and nobody pushes a sale; try the karadut (black mulberry) and the mürdüm plum. Bottles are ₺250 to ₺550. The wooden tasting counter is small and the balcony above the lane is cramped, so take the counter in turns and watch the street from up there.
Hera Şarap Evi (202. Sokak No:10/c) runs 09:00 to 23:00 and is the only place in Şirince keeping bar hours. The room is modern and sharply styled among the old stone houses, with backlit bottle shelving, dark wood and glass, and proper stemware. It carries serious Turkish grape wines alongside the sweet fruit bottles. Glasses are ₺180 to ₺300, bottles ₺400 to ₺900. This is where to drink in the evening.
The Efeler Yolu out of the village
Efeler Yolu Stage 27 leaves Şirince for the House of the Virgin Mary, waymarked in red and white on rocks and olive trunks. The track is stony, running out between dry-stone terrace walls and into pine forest. From the ridge above, the whole red-roofed village shows in its green bowl.
Walking it is free and unticketed, and the signing is good enough to go self-guided. The shorter viewpoint loop is 6 km and takes two hours. A local guide for a group costs ₺1,500 to ₺3,500.
Where to stay
Nişanyan Evleri started the village's revival in the 1990s, when Sevan Nişanyan had Şirince heritage-listed and rebuilt its derelict houses. It is a cluster of restored 19th-century village houses, rustic cottages and a mock stone defence tower above the rooftops, with a white marble swimming pool, a hammam and terraced gardens of fig and olive. The 13 rooms are spread across the houses, inns and cottages, and a whole cottage or inn can be booked. Reception is staffed 24 hours, breakfast is included, and two people pay ₺5,000 to ₺13,000 a night.
Terrace Houses Şirince rents stone cottages named rather than numbered: Fig, Olive, Clockmaker's and Grapevine, each with old timber ceilings and a private vine-shaded terrace looking straight across the village bowl. A village-breakfast tray is brought out to the terrace. Cottages run up to three bedrooms, from ₺9,000 to ₺11,000 a night. Check-in is 13:00 and you book direct on +90 532 263 7942.
Stay at either and you get the village once the day-trippers have gone. The House of the Virgin Mary is 16 km away and is a day-trip of its own, not a Şirince sight.
Practical notes
No venue here lists a closing day. The one thing to plan around is the coach window between 10:00 and 15:00. Book Şirincem ahead for a weekend table, reserve Kırkınca Arşipel by phone, and buy your wine in the bazaar before the lane fills.
See the Izmir guide and the Izmir hotel search.
Gallery
Şirince in pictures
Şirince — your questions
When do the tour coaches reach Şirince?
Coach groups funnel through the covered bazaar and market lanes from 10:00 until 15:00. Walk the lane before 09:30 if you want it quiet, and start at Aya Yani Kilisesi when it opens at 08:30.
Can you visit the Nesin Mathematics Village?
Yes. It is 1 km above the village on Kayser hill, open 09:00 to 18:00, and free to walk into. Small groups need no booking, but large parties must arrange a time in advance because lectures are running on a working campus.
Do the two churches charge admission?
Neither does. Aya Yani Kilisesi is free and unticketed, 08:30 to 17:30, and Aziz Dimitrios Kilisesi, five minutes uphill, is the same. Coins for the wishing pool at Aya Yani are optional.
Where should you eat the Şirince village breakfast?
Gülgün Abla'nın Yeri rolls the gözleme dough and loads the domed oven in front of you, ₺400 to ₺650 a head, and takes no bookings. Şirincem Restaurant on 220. Sokak serves the spread at ₺500 to ₺750 a head and wants a booking at weekends.
Is the fruit-wine tasting worth doing?
At Kıvırcık Şarap Evi the tasting of five or six fruit wines is free and nobody pushes you to buy; try the karadut and the mürdüm plum. Bottles are ₺250 to ₺550. For Turkish grape wines and later hours, Hera Şarap Evi on 202. Sokak pours until 23:00.
