Smyrna - modern Izmir - was one of the most dazzling cities on the Ionian coast during the Hellenistic period. A cosmopolitan trading port famed for its art and its medical school, it enjoyed equal influence in Asia Minor with its neighbors Ephesus and Pergamon. From the seventeenth century onwards a host of varied, spectacular works of art were discovered as the city's impressive architectural complexes were unearthed. Taken from the Louvre's department of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman antiquities, the Izmir Museum of Art and History, the French National Library, the Palace of Versailles and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, some 200 pieces bear eloquent testimony here to the artistic profusion of this ancient city.