What is the iconography of Smyrna, the most important port of the Eastern Mediterranean before the destruction of 1922? This publication highlights its renewed image and the contribution of the Greeks to the process of its modernization.

Their active participation in the public and private architecture of the city, alongside the emergence of cosmopolitan and multicultural society of Smyrna, as the economic and ideological framework of architectural creation, is presented in light of new findings, the result of long-term research in public and private archives.

The time frame of the study corresponds to the beginning of a period of major modernization projects and the fire of 1922, when, aside from the tragic ordeal of the human factor, the image of the last spring for the multinational society of the city also collapses.

A final blow to the cosmopolitanism of "infidel" Smyrna was the mandatory population exchange between Turkey and Greece with the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923.

As for the structure of the text, it first examines the general characteristics of the urban space, as it is shaped within the framework of the Ottoman reforms, and then follows the analytical presentation of the buildings resulting from the initiative of the Greek community, buildings that house commercial and recreational uses, and of course, the various types of housing found in the city and suburbs.

The publication also emphasizes the radiance of this architecture in the broader area of Asia Minor, as well as the opposite coastal region, as the bidirectional pathways were not limited to the level of highbrow architecture but also transferred into popular tradition.

In lieu of a conclusion, as an epilogue, a summary of the architecture of the now-refugee housing in the new homeland, Greece, is presented, at a time when the refugees were forced to adapt their previous way of life to the new reality.

• Vasilis Kolonas is a professor emeritus at the Department of Architects of the University of Thessaly.