Bursa, Turkey

Bursa is a large city in the Southern Marmara Region of Turkey, 20 km inland from the Marmara coast. It's the country's fourth-largest city, with a population of 2,161,990 in 2021, and with another million living in the wider metropolis. It's mostly modern, industrial and concrete-ridden, earning its living from textiles, agricultural produce and the automobile industry. However as the cradle of the Ottoman state, it is crowded with historic mosques, tombs, caravanserais, bazaars and parks, and in 2014, Bursa along with the nearby village of Cumalıkızık was added to the UNESCO world heritage list. Above it are the forests and ski slopes of Mount Uludağ.

Prusa, the kernel of present-day Bursa, was named for Prusias king of Bithynia, who laid its foundation stone in 202 BC. This was fortified into a walled citadel on the ridge of Tophane, controlling the valley trade routes. The Romans annexed Bithynia in 74 BC, and they especially enjoyed the thermal springs of Çekirge just west of Prusa - so it was a tourist resort even in those days. Byzantium (from 330 AD called Constantinople) became the metropolis of their eastern empire, continuing long after Rome itself fell.