İznik

İznik stands within ancient walls at the eastern end of the lake that bears its name. As Nicaea, it was one of the great cities of Bithynia and the meeting place of the first ecumenical council in 325, when bishops gathered under Constantine to debate Christian doctrine. Its gates and long circuit of defences frame a city whose streets carry the traces of Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman rule.

After Constantinople fell to the Fourth Crusade in 1204, Nicaea became the centre of a Byzantine successor state. Its rulers recovered Constantinople in 1261, but the city later faced growing Ottoman pressure. Orhan captured it in 1331, making İznik an important town of the early Ottoman realm. Churches were adapted for new uses, while mosques, schools and other endowed buildings gave the town a new civic life.

İznik became celebrated for its pottery and tiles. Workshops developed fine white-bodied ceramics painted beneath a transparent glaze, supplying vessels and architectural decoration for patrons far beyond the town. The ceramic body combined quartz, clay and glass frit, producing a pale surface suited to painted designs. In the sixteenth century their designs and colours adorned major Ottoman buildings. The workshops and the surviving monuments of Nicaea made İznik a place where the artistic achievements of different centuries met within the same ancient walls.