Muğla

The district area's physical features are determined by several pot-shaped high plains, delimited by mountains, of which the largest is the one where the city of Muğla is located and which is called under the same name (Muğla Plain). It is surrounded by steep slopes denuded of soil, paved with calcerous geology, and a scrub cover which gives the immediate vicinity of Muğla a barren appearance uncharacteristic of its region. Arable land is limited to valley floors.

Its former profile as a predominantly rural, difficult to access, isolated and underpopulated region enclosed by a rugged mountainous complex is now coming to an end. Also in recent years, a major program of restoration of the city's architectural heritage has enhanced local tourism. The city remains an orderly, compact, and provincial agricultural center. The city which retains its old neighborhoods, not having succumbed to the mid-20th century boom in concrete reconstruction, but displays a progressive mind as exemplified by the pride still expressed at having had Turkey's first female provincial governor in the 1990s, Lale Aytaman. Nevertheless, Muğla still lacks sizeable manufacturing and processing centers, and its economy relies on trade, crafts, services, tourism, and agriculture. Therefore, tourism in Muğla is a great opportunity for local community employment, and its fertile soil and amenable climate provide a variety of products for people working in the agricultural sector.

Muğla has a rather humid Mediterranean climate (Köppen: Csa, Trewartha: 'wet' Cs or Cf). It is characterised by long, hot, dry summers and cool, wet winters.

Although it is close to major resorts, Muğla has only recently begun to attract visitors. Sights of interest in the city include:

• Great Mosque of Muğla (Ulu Cami) – large mosque built in 1344 by the Beys of Menteşe
• Konakaltı Han and Yağcılar Han – restored 18th century caravanserais, the first used as an art gallery and facing Muğla Museum, and the second used for more commercial purposes
• Kurşunlu Cami – large mosque built in 1495
• Muğla City Museum has a good collection of archaeological and ethnographical artefacts, and 9 million year-old animal and plant fossils, recently discovered in nearby Kaklıcatepe
• the Ottoman Empire-era bazaar (Arasta) – marked by a clock tower built by a Greek craftsman named Filivari Usta in 1895
• Vakıflar Hamam – a still operating Turkish bath which dates back to 1258

The old quarter of Muğla – on the slopes and around Saburhane Square (Meydanı), consisting of about four hundred registered old houses dating from the 18th and 19th centuries, many of which are restored. These houses are mainly in the Turkish / Ottoman style, characterized by hayat ("courtyard") sections accessed through double-shuttered doors called kuzulu kapı ("lamb doors") and dotted with chimneys typical of Muğla. But there are also a number of "Greek" houses. The differences between the two types of houses may have as much to do with the extent to which wood or stone were used in their architecture, and whether they were arranged in introverted or extraverted styles, as with who inhabited them previously.

Local students tend to hang out in open air cafés along the İzmir highway, or in the caravanserai, or in Sanat Evi ("Art House") – an Ottoman-style residence that has been turned into a café / art gallery exhibiting principally wood carvings.

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  Muğla Museum Gladiator gravestone
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  Muğla Museum Gladiator gravestone
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  Muğla Museum Gladiator gravestone
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  Muğla Museum Gladiator gravestone
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  Muğla Museum Gladiator gravestone
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  Muğla Museum Gladiator gravestone
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  Muğla Museum Gladiators in small ceramic
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  Muğla Museum Small ceramic
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  Muğla Museum Statuettes
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  Muğla Museum Child bathing ceramic
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  Muğla Museum Stage mask
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  Muğla Museum Museum courtyard
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  Muğla Museum Frieze
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  Muğla Museum Frieze
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  Muğla Museum Frieze
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  Muğla Museum Christian decoration
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  Muğla Museum Seljuk plaque
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  Muğla Museum Interior
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  Muğla Chimneys
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  Muğla Chimneys
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  Muğla Clock tower
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  Muğla Old houses
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  Muğla Old houses
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  Muğla Old houses
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  Muğla Old houses
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  Muğla Old houses
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  Muğla great mosque
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  Muğla Şhahidi Camii
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  Muğla Şhahidi Camii
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  Muğla Şhahidi Camii
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  Muğla Şeyh Camii
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  Muğla Şeyh Camii
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  Muğla Kurşunlu Camii Front
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  Muğla Kurşunlu Camii
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  Muğla Kurşunlu Camii
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  Muğla Kurşunlu Camii Painting of Mecca
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  Muğla Konakaltı Han
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  Muğla Konakaltı Han
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  Muğla Hacıkadı Evi
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  Muğla Hacıkadı Evi
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  A street in the old quarter
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  Buildings in the new part of the city.
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  An old photograph of Muğla chimneys.
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  A traditional house.
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  Muğla in 19th century.
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  Cityscape from Mount Asar
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  Old quarter of the city.
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  Cityscape from Mount Asar
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  Cityscape from Mount Asar
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  Old quarter of the city.

Street in the new quarters of Muğla.

Muğla's political color has traditionally been center-left. In Turkey's 2004 local elections, Dr. Osman Gürün (CHP) was re-elected, increasing his votes to 43.28%, aided in this by the abrupt virtual collapse of the other center-left party the DSP. The 2004 elections were the seventh successive victory for the center-left candidates in the Muğla municipality. Turkey's incumbent AKP and the traditional center-right DYP have each obtained (24.5–24.75%). In 2009 communal elections, MHP made a significant leap in votes and reached 24.2% of votes cast. CHP had collected almost half of the votes at 46%.

The local football club, Muğlaspor currently compete in the third tier of the Turkish football pyramid.

• Şahidi İbrahim Dede – 15th–16th century Sufi poet
• Basil Zaharoff (Βασίλειος Ζαχάρωφ) - Muğla, 1849 - Monte Carlo, 1936, Greek arms dealer and industrialist
• Nail Çakırhan – 20th century poet and architect
• Zihni Derin – 20th century agronomist and agriculturalist who pioneered tea production in Turkey

Due to the particularity of its location, commanding a large part of Anatolia's southwestern coast and a number of busy district centers, Muğla is also notable by the large number of people who, short of being natives in the strict sense, had associations of one sort or another with the city, including among its small Greek minority until the 1923 Population exchange between Greece and Turkey.[lower-alpha 1] Among these can be listed:

• Arms trading tycoon Basil Zaharoff, whose family were actually Greeks of the Ottomnan capital but who was born in Muğla in 1849
• The French actress of Greek descent Anna Mouglalis, as attested by her name, can trace her roots to the city
• Mining and poultry magnate Yavuz Sıtkı Koçman (d. 2002) who contributed an important part of his fortune to building the university in the 1990s

• Caria
• Menteşe (district)
• Menteşe (beylik) (Anatolian beyliks)
• Muğla University
• Mesut of Menteşe

• Bean, George Ewart (1989). Turkey beyond the Meander. London, UK: John Murray Publishers. ISBN 978-0-7195-4663-1.

Wikivoyage has a travel guide for Muğla.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Muğla.

• Muğla Municipality
• Several hundreds of pictures