Ionia

Ionia is the name given during ancient times to the central region of Anatolia’s Aegean shore in Asia Minor, present-day Turkey, one of the most important centres of the Greek world. Here the Greeks founded a dozen mini-states, two of them on the offshore islands of Chios and Samos, the rest of them stretching along the strip of mountainous coastland. During the 6th century BCE, Ionia became the focus of the intellectual life of Greece, a period known as the “Ionian awakening”, a name for the initial phase of classical Greek civilization.