Şirince, Turkey: a local’s guide to the hillside village

Şirince is a hill village of old Greek stone houses eight kilometres above Ephesus, and it is the place we take people when they say they want one afternoon with no marble in it. Vine-shaded courtyards, homemade fruit wine, olive oil pressed a hundred metres from the tree, and lanes that reward getting slightly lost. It is also — let’s be honest early — very much discovered: at midday in August the main lane is a slow river of day-trippers. The trick to Şirince is entirely a matter of clock.

A short history with a population exchange in it

For centuries this was Çirkince, a prosperous Greek Orthodox village living off figs, olives and wine. Legend says the name — "ugly" — was the villagers’ way of keeping outsiders uninterested, and the view suggests they were lying on purpose. In the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey its Greek families left for Kavala and Muslim families from the Thessaloniki region arrived in their place; in 1926 the name was officially softened to Şirince, "pleasant." The two churches — St John the Baptist and the hilltop St Demetrios — still anchor the skyline above the mosque, which is the whole story of this coast in one glance.

What to actually do

• Eat long. The courtyard restaurants up the side lanes (not on the main lane) serve village food that outclasses most of the coast: gözleme off the griddle, braised wild greens, köfte, and whatever the grandmother in charge decided that morning. Lunch is the monument here.
• Taste the fruit wine — quince, mulberry, blackberry, pomegranate, peach. It’s village wine, sweet and cold and honest about what it is. Cellars offer small tastings; buy a bottle from the one that didn’t rush you.
• Climb to St John the Baptist church, restored enough to read its frescoes’ ghosts, and up again toward St Demetrios for the roofscape photo everyone takes and nobody regrets.
• Buy the boring things: olive oil, olive oil soap, dried figs, lace. They’re the real local products, and the least marked-up.

The 2012 footnote everyone asks about

In December 2012, when a misread Mayan calendar had the world ending, someone announced that Şirince’s "positive energy" would spare it. For one surreal week the village hosted global TV crews, doomsday tourists and reportedly a wedding boom. The world continued; Şirince’s fame did too. Locals tell the story with a completely straight face, which is the best way to hear it.

When to come (this is the important part)

Before 10:30 or after 16:00, any month; May, September and October if you can choose. The village empties with the tour buses, and evening Şirince — swallows, wine, wood smoke — is a different place from lunchtime Şirince. This is exactly why our Ephesus & Şirince day does the ruins in the morning and gives the village the whole afternoon: the two places are at their best on opposite schedules.

Base advice: sleep in Selçuk for Ephesus logistics, visit Şirince for the long lunch, and use Kuşadası for beaches and boats. That triangle, in that order, is the local playbook.