The River Meles is a stream charged with history and famous in literature, especially by virtue of being associated in a common and consistent tradition with Homer's birth and works. It flowed by the ancient city of Smyrna, and a namesake of it flows through the present-day metropolitan center of İzmir.
An 1880 photograph showing the Roman-built (also used in Byzantine and Ottoman times) Kızılçullu aqueducts on the present-day and historically very debatable Meles Brook in Buca, İzmir, near which a cave associated with Homer is also found.
İzmir is a metropolitan city on the west coast of Anatolia, and capital of İzmir Province. It is the third most populous city in Turkey, after Istanbul and Ankara, and the largest urban agglomeration on the Aegean Sea.
Image: A panoramic view of the Alsancak quarter in Izmir