Manisa

Modern Manisa is a center of industry and services, advantaged by its closeness to the international port city and the regional metropolitan center of İzmir and by its hinterland rich in quantity and variety of agricultural production. İzmir's proximity also adds dense traffic of daily commuters between the two cities, separated by a half-hour drive served by a six-lane highway across Mount Sipylus's mythic scenery.

The historic part of Manisa spreads out from a forested valley in the immediate slopes of Sipylus mountainside, along Çaybaşı Stream which flows next to Niobe's "Weeping Rock" ("Ağlayan Kaya"), an ancient bridge called the "Red Bridge" ("Kırmızı Köprü") as well as to several tombs-shrines in the Turkish style dating back to the Saruhan period (14th century). Under Ottoman rule in the centuries that followed, the city had already extended into the undulated terrain at the start of the plain.