Dinar – Apemeia Ancient City

Dinar is located on the main road from Izmir to Konya. It is also at the crossroads of that road and the north-south road from Antalya to Afyon, Kütahya and Eskişehir.

Ancient Dinar was Celaenae where Xerxes the Great had a palace. Xenephon reported that Cyrus the Younger under whom he served filled the palace grounds with wild animals. (In those years lions and tigers commonly roamed Anatolia.) Renamed Apamea, according to Strabo it was one of the important commercial centers in the 4th century BC. Business here was under the control of the Italians and the Jews. One of the beliefs of the resident Jews was that he highest mountain behind the city was Mt. Araray. Philip of Macedon used that tradition by adding the mountain to the coins he struck after he included Apamea in his conquests.

Dinar now is an agricultural town; it suffered from a serious earthquake in the fall of 1995.