Current Time in Merkezefendi, Turkey

Merkezefendi is one of the two central districts of Denizli, a lively provincial capital in the inland part of the Aegean region of Turkey. It covers the western half of the city and the countryside beyond, spreading across a broad fertile plain watered by the Çürüksu River and framed by mountain ridges, with the peak of Honaz rising to the south-east. The climate is Mediterranean but tempered by altitude and distance from the coast, bringing hot dry summers and cool, sometimes snowy winters.

Roughly three hundred thousand people live in the district, which together with neighbouring Pamukkale forms a metropolitan area of well over half a million. Denizli is one of the great textile centres of Turkey, and Merkezefendi contains many of its factories and organised industrial zones. Towels, bathrobes, bed linen and other home textiles produced here are exported around the world, and the district also has metalworking, cable, marble and food industries, along with vineyards, olive groves and orchards in the surrounding villages.

The district takes its name from Merkez Efendi, a revered Ottoman scholar and Sufi of the sixteenth century who was born in a village nearby and later became a leading religious figure in Istanbul. The land itself has been inhabited for far longer. The ancient city of Laodicea on the Lycus, founded in the third century before the common era and one of the wealthiest towns of Roman Asia Minor, lies within the district. It was an important early Christian centre, addressed in the Book of Revelation as one of the seven churches of Asia, and its ruins are now a major archaeological park. The modern town grew after the arrival of the railway in the late nineteenth century and expanded enormously with the textile boom of recent decades.

Visitors come first to Laodicea, where excavation has revealed colonnaded streets, two theatres, a stadium, temples, monumental fountains and one of the oldest church buildings ever found in Anatolia. The Denizli Museum, the covered bazaar and the tomb complex associated with Merkez Efendi are other points of interest. A cable car climbs from the edge of the city to the Bağbaşı plateau, where pine forests, walking trails and panoramic viewpoints over the whole plain provide a favourite weekend escape. The travertine terraces of Pamukkale and the ruins of Hierapolis are a short drive away.

Local life centres on tea gardens, parks and the busy markets selling textiles, dried figs, grapes and the region's famous handwoven fabrics. The Denizli rooster, a tall breed celebrated for its unusually long crow, is the emblem of the province and appears on monuments throughout the city.

Motorways and a railway link Denizli with İzmir, Antalya and Istanbul, an airport lies to the east, and modern buses serve the district. Pamukkale University, one of the larger universities in western Turkey, brings tens of thousands of students to the city.

Merkezefendi is worth knowing for its ancient ruins, its industry and its position at the gateway to one of Turkey's most famous landscapes.