got hold of about a hundred vintage pictures (dating from 1880 to approx 1950) of izmir. i had seen images of the old city before and always found them amazingly fascinating. the bunch i managed to gather speaks of places like: the german post office, the french hospital, the hunting club, the sporting club, the greek neighbourhood, the cafe' de paris, the grand hotel kraemer, the bank of greece, the stock exchange, the american embassy, the british hospital, ... displaying images of incredible grandeur and outstanding architecture. no wonder they used to call it "the pearl of the aegean"!
i love to see images of this kind - showing you how places used to be in the past. however, i must admit that in the case of izmir i also find it rather disheartening... just because... if you look at the city today... where is any trace of its old splendor? today's urban landscape is ugly to say the least - with neither care nor bother to actually save and protect whatever is left of beautiful buildings and monuments. i remember experiencing the same frustrating feeling when i visited the history museum in macau. my jaw dropped in discovering that, under portugal, macau had been the prettiest place... a sort of asian lisbon - whereas today...macau is one of the ugliest, messiest and appaling cities one could ever visit; a kind of bad taste replica of the seediest side of las vegas.
both in the case of izmir and in the (more extreme) case of macau -- at times i think it may be fitting to say some places are often forcibly transformed in non-places... easy to trace on a map, but deprived of their personality and beauty.
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