Scholarship, travel accounts and emigre testimonies often depict late Ottoman Smyrna/Izmir as a vibrant, 'Europeanized' port city. With its wharf renovated in the last quarter of the 19th century based on European urban planning, the port indeed presented an array of European-style entertainment venues, consulates, banks and commercial enterprises to seaside viewers. This paper will join recent research interrogating the concept of 'Europeanization' in relation to Izmir, specifically in urban cultural life. Taking a conceptual view not only from the Mediterranean but also from the mainland, it will explore the significance of the Ottoman architectural, artistic and migratory environment surrounding the port. Specifically, this cultural hinterland boasts the Byzantine and Ottoman imperial seat of Manisa, an overlooked site of historical Ottoman arts and architecture with increasing ties to Izmir through the late 19th century rail system. Whereas scholarship has fruitfully mined Izmir's hinterland as an agricultural basis of the port's economy, this study will chart the networking of multireligious leaders, musicians and intellectuals between Manisa and Izmir as well as the wider province. Untapped sources (Ottoman newspapers, memoirs and music publications) depict Mevlevi-Jewish musical collaboration, a burgeoning Ottoman and European art music scene, 'gated' music venues, and multifunctional liturgical spaces. A wider lens on Izmir situating the port in its ambient cultural geography suggests an ambiguous cosmopolitanism that proves surprising longlasting. Versatile musicians respond to the demands of a diverse music marketplace sustained through WWI and the Greek occupation by the port's relative independence from the capital, musicians immigrating under pressure of war, and a governor conciliatory to its minority entertainers and economy.