'Live your myth in Greece,' the Greek National Tourism Office urges us. This summer's posters feature a young couple, children running along the beach behind them, while an anonymous columned temple hovers implausibly in the Aegean haze. Greece, it seems, has no history except ancient history. In Turkey, too, you can swim in the morning, and climb up to the theatre of ancient Pergamon the same afternoon. But how many of those who do so ever give any attention to those other ruins, of 19th-century neoclassical town houses, which dot the back streets of nearby Bergama? Ayvalik, down the coast, is also full of them, some restored and turned into hotels, others ready for demolition. For within living memory, Ayvalik was a Greek town, just as Mytilene, across the bay, was home to thousands of Muslims.

LRB 3 August 2006 | PDF Download