Şirince

Şirince (pronounced [ʃiˈɾindʒe]), also known as Kirkintzes (Greek: Κιρκιντζές), is a neighbourhood in the municipality and district of Selçuk, İzmir Province, Turkey.

[3] There is an alternative suggestion made by Cahit Tecli that the village takes its name from the nomadic Turcoman tribe which appears in Ottoman registers as Cirkin, Cirkinlu, Cirkinoglu, Cirkitali and Cirkitulu.

He notes that the women "dressed in the Turkish manner, covering their faces"....and the men "all armed as the Turks, with pistols and yatagan (a type of long knife) and are renowned for having killed a lot of pirates from the island of Samos".

A building known as the House of Mary[4] (Ottoman Turkish: پناغى قپىلى Panaya Kapulu), about 17 km outside of Şirince, is venerated by Catholic Christians as well as Muslims.

The Christians, descended from the first churches in Ephesus, had a tradition of venerating the building long before foreigners tracked it down in 1881 (using descriptions seen by Bl.

Nişanyan also built Theatre Madrasa (in Turkish Tiyatro Medresesi), a theater institute and actors’ retreat in the manner of mediaeval Muslim seminaries.

[9] Constructed strictly along the lines of traditional Aegean rural architecture, the village offers summer courses in college-level and postgraduate mathematics.

Şirince acquired world-wide fame when tourists flocked to the village in December 2012 to witness the Mayan Apocalypse, as New Age mystics believed its "positive energy" would aid in weathering the catastrophe, during the 2012 phenomenon.

A view of Şirince