Sirince Village is a small but famous tourist village in the Selcuk district of Izmir. According to local tradition, some of the people who once lived in the ancient city of Ephesus moved into the hills in the 15th century and founded Sirince. Unfortunately, no buildings from the 15th century have survived. The oldest houses and structures you see in the village today mostly date back to the 19th century.

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Until the population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1924, Sirince was a Greek village. For this reason, it is still often called Sirince Greek Village, even though it is now inhabited by Turkish families.

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There are two popular stories about the name of the village:

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• One story tells that the Greeks loved the village so much that they deliberately called it “Cirkince” (meaning “ugly”) so that others would not discover it. After the population exchange, the Governor of Izmir changed the name to Sirince, meaning “pretty” or “pleasant.”

• Another story says that one of the village’s old names was Kirkinca, which comes from “forty people” and refers to the first group of settlers who lived in this area.

Sirince became world-famous in 2012 thanks to the so-called Mayan prophecy. At that time, many people believed that the world would end on 21 December 2012, and that only two places would be spared: Sirince in Turkey and Bugarach in southern France.

Of course, the apocalypse never happened, but this story attracted huge international attention. Thousands of people visited Sirince before and after that date, and many of them fell in love with the village. Today, visitors often say that after seeing Sirince once, you always want to come back.