Manisa, Aegean Region, Türkiye

🇹🇷 Manisa, historically known as Magnesia, is a large city in Turkey's Aegean Region and the administrative seat of Manisa Province. Modern Manisa is a booming centre of industry and services, advantaged by its closeness to the international port city and the regional metropolitan centre of İzmir and by its fertile hinterland rich in quantity and variety of agricultural production. In fact, İzmir's proximity also adds a particular dimension to all aspects of life's pace in Manisa in the form of a dense traffic of daily commuters between the two cities, separated as they are by a half-hour drive served by a fine six-lane highway nevertheless requiring attention at all times due to its curves and the rapid ascent across Mount Sipylus's mythic scenery.

The historic part of Manisa spreads out from a forested valley in the immediate slopes of Sipylus mountainside, along Çaybaşı Stream which flows next to Niobe's "Weeping Rock" ("Ağlayan Kaya"), an ancient bridge called the "Red Bridge" ("Kırmızı Köprü") as well as to several tombs-shrines in the Turkish style dating back to the Saruhan period (14th century). Under Ottoman rule in the centuries that followed, the city had already extended into the undulated terrain at the start of the plain. In the last couple of decades, Manisa's width more than tripled in size across its vast plain formed by the alluvial deposits of the River Gediz, a development in which the construction of new block apartments, industrial zones and of Celal Bayar University campus played a key role.

The city of Manisa is also widely visited, especially during March and September festivals, the former festival being the continuation of a five-hundred-year-old "Mesir Paste Distribution" tradition, and also for the nearby Mount Spil national park. It is also a departure point for other visitor attractions of international acclaim which are located nearby within Manisa's depending region, such as Sardes and Alaşehir (ancient Philadelphia) inland. The city also has a Jewish community.

Economy Manisa and some of its depending district centres have succeeded in solidly clinching an industrial production base in recent decades, in this supported both initially and continuously by the century-old wide-scale agricultural processing and related activities (production of flour and olive oil, basic textiles, leather goods, agricultural tools and instruments, cotton ginning). Olive, walnut and almond cultivation are among the important agricultural activities of Manisa.

According to the figures published by the Governorship, 694 companies in Manisa Province out of the province's total number of companies of 5,502 for 2007 are certified industrial enterprises and these employ a total of 44,449 people. Within the 694, Manisa centre is in the lead with 238 enterprises engaged in industrial production, with the depending centres of Turgutlu (125 industrial enterprises), Akhisar (100), Salihli (78) closely contending, and Saruhanlı (33), Alaşehir (30), Kula (28), Demirci (20) and Soma (17) following.

Among leading industrial activities Manisa companies are engaged in are production of foodstuffs (196 companies), building materials (114), metal goods (85), as well as textile industry and clothing industry (46) and cotton ginning (43). The highest numbers of workforce are concentrated in electronics/electrical appliances, foodstuffs and construction industries.

The choice of Manisa as production base in the 1980s by the Turkish consumer electronics and white goods giant Vestel was an important boost for the present-day level of sophistication. Today Manisa's economic activities are far from being confined to a sole company. Manisa registered roughly 200m US dollars in FDI in 2004 and well-known businesses such as Italian white goods company Indesit, German electrical goods company Bosch, UK packaging company Rexam and Imperial Tobacco of the UK have invested in Manisa.

In 2004/2005 Manisa was chosen among 200 contestants as the Most Cost-Effective European city by the FDi magazine's yearly round of votes to determine European Cities and Regions of the Future, its extremely low office and industrial rents and competitive labor costs having been particularly noted. Again for 2006/2007, Manisa was named among 89 European cities as the winner of the category of the Best Economic Potential in Europe, as runner-up for the categories Southern-Europe's City of the Future (winner for Turkey) and the Most Cost-Effective European city.

The city also has a football team, Manisaspor, which plays in the Turkish Premier Super League under the home colors of red and white and away colors of black and white. Manisaspor's home ground is the Manisa 19 Mayis Stadi.