Şirince Village: Wine, Peaches and Traditional Turkish Life

High in the hills above Kuşadası, in western Turkey, the whitewashed and terracotta-roofed houses of Şirince spill down a mountainside surrounded by peach orchards and vineyards planted on terraces cut into the slope. Once a Greek Orthodox village known as Kirkinche, its stone houses and hillside church still carry the imprint of the families who lived here before the 1923 population exchange sent them to Greece. Today, Şirince is one of the most atmospheric stops on a small group tour of Ancient Turkey, a village where wine-making, traditional cheese pastries and a shaded open-air bazaar keep an older rhythm of rural life alive.

A Greek Village Rebuilt: Şirince’s Layered History

Şirince’s story is inseparable from the upheavals of the early twentieth century. The village was established, according to local tradition, by freed Greek slaves from nearby Ephesus, who deliberately chose a name that translates roughly to “ugly” in the hope of discouraging outsiders from settling there. For centuries it grew into a prosperous Greek Orthodox community, known as Kirkinche, its wealth built on viticulture and the fertile orchard land of the surrounding hills.

That changed after the Greco-Turkish War, when the 1923 Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations required Orthodox Christian residents to relocate to Greece, while Muslim families from Greece, many originally from Thessaloniki and Kavala, resettled in villages like this one across Anatolia. The village was renamed Şirince, and its new residents inherited stone houses, a hillside church and terraced vineyards built by the community that had come before them. Walking its lanes today, that dual heritage is still visible in the architecture, even as the village’s daily life is thoroughly Turkish.

Vineyards and Peach Orchards on the Aegean Slopes

Şirince sits at roughly 600 metres above sea level, high enough that summer nights are noticeably cooler than on the coast at Kuşadası, a difference that has shaped the village’s agricultural identity for generations. The surrounding hillsides are given over to vineyards and to the peach orchards that give the village part of its modern reputation, along with quince, blackberry and other stone fruit grown on the terraces. Local producers ferment much of this fruit into wine, and small tasting rooms along the main street offer visitors a chance to sample styles rarely found outside this corner of Turkey, including fruit wines made from peach and pomegranate alongside more conventional grape varieties.

Traditional Stone Houses and Village Architecture

The houses that climb Şirince’s slopes are built in a style typical of nineteenth-century Aegean Greek villages: two-storey stone-and-timber structures with overhanging upper floors, shuttered windows and small interior courtyards shaded by grapevines. Cobbled lanes, too narrow and steep for most vehicles, wind between them, which keeps the village largely pedestrian and unhurried even when it is busy with day visitors. At the centre of the village, a former Greek Orthodox church, built in the basilica style, stands as one of the clearest reminders of the community that constructed it, its stone walls and bell tower now a fixture of the village skyline rather than an active parish.

Cheese Pastries and Village Cuisine

Şirince’s food culture is built around what the surrounding hills produce. Local women in the village prepare gözleme, a thin, hand-rolled flatbread folded around soft cheese and herbs and cooked on a domed griddle, a demonstration that features on Odyssey Traveller’s Ancient Turkey itinerary as part of the village visit. Beyond the pastries, village kitchens make use of the peach and grape harvest in jams, pekmez (grape molasses) and dried fruit, sold alongside olive oil soap and lace in the small shops that line the main lane. It is unhurried, home-style cooking, a contrast to the more formal dining found in Istanbul or along the coast.

The Open-Air Bazaar and Everyday Village Life

Şirince’s small open-air bazaar occupies the sloped main street and a scatter of side lanes, its stalls shaded by awnings and vine trellises. Handmade lace, olive oil soaps, dried herbs, local honey and bottles of fruit wine are the most common offerings, produced by residents rather than trucked in from elsewhere. Because the village is compact, most of it can be explored on foot in a couple of hours, though the steep, uneven cobblestones mean comfortable walking shoes matter more here than in flatter parts of a Turkey itinerary. Despite its popularity with day-trippers from the coast, Şirince remains a working village, with residents tending the same vineyards and orchards their families have worked for decades.

Visiting Şirince on the Ancient Turkey Tour

Şirince appears roughly two-thirds of the way through our complete Ancient Turkey itinerary, on the day the group travels from Kuşadası toward the Aegean coastal town of Foça. The village visit includes time in local houses to see how a traditional Turkish mountain village lives, the gözleme cooking demonstration, and free time to explore the bazaar, before the group continues north for the afternoon. Group sizes on this tour are kept deliberately small, with departures capped at a maximum of 16 travellers, which suits a village whose steep lanes were never built for large tour groups.

Nearby Sites Worth Combining with a Şirince Visit

Şirince’s position in the hills above Kuşadası puts it within easy reach of some of western Turkey’s most significant ancient sites, which is part of why it works so well as a single day’s stop on a longer itinerary rather than a destination in its own right. Ephesus, one of the best-preserved Greco-Roman cities in the eastern Mediterranean, lies only a short drive away. Further south, the marble ruins of Aphrodisias, once famed across the Roman world for its sculptors, offer a useful point of comparison for how differently Greek, Roman and Ottoman-era communities have shaped this same stretch of Anatolia.

Şirince rewards travellers who are drawn to the quieter, more domestic side of Turkish history: not monumental ruins, but a village still shaped by the vineyards, orchards and stone houses of the people who built it. Seeing it as part of a longer, guided journey through Turkey’s ancient world, with time to talk to local residents and taste what the hills produce, is a fitting way to round out a deeper understanding of this part of the country.