Afyonkarahisar (Afyon), Turkey

Capital City

Life here demands resilience - this conservative country town of 299,673 in western Turkey lacks the cultural amenities of coastal cities, offering little in the way of nightlife or entertainment. What you'll find instead is a strategic transport hub 250km southwest of Ankara, where major highways and rail lines converge at the foot of an ancient hilltop fortress.

The city's fortunes were built on opium production until the 1960s, when international pressure forced a shift to licensed pharmaceutical morphine extraction. Today, the local economy centers on marble quarrying (producing prestigious "Afyon white" marble), thermal spa tourism at its numerous hot springs, and agriculture - particularly livestock, eggs (6 million laid daily), and the city's famous spiced sausages (sucuk). The alkaloid factory here produces nearly a third of the world's medical morphine from strictly controlled poppy cultivation.