NICÆA (Ishnik or Isnik), a well-built and important city of Bithynia, stood in a spacious and fertile plain on the eastern shore of the Lake of Ascania (Lake of Isnik). According to one tradition, it was built by some of Alexander's soldiers, natives of Nicæa in Locris, and derived its name from the birth-place of its founders. Another account, however, states that it was erected on the ruins of a former town (Ancore or Helicore), by Antigonus, and was called after him Antigoneia, and that this name was afterwards changed into Nicæa, in honour of Nicæa, the wife of Lysimachus. The town enjoyed a long career of prosperity under the different governments that successively ruled over it. Under the native kings of Bithynia it was important enough to compete with Nicomedia for the honour of being considered capital of the country. During its subjection to the Romans many of its public buildings were restored, and its streets were often the scene of the celebration of great festivals in honour of the emperors and the gods. In the time of the Eastern Empire the city was enlarged, was surrounded with new walls, and became famous throughout Christendom as the place where, in 325 A.D., the Nicene creed was drawn up. (See NICE, Council of.) After being during the middle ages a frequent subject of dispute between the Turks and the Christians, it was constituted by Theodore Lascaris, in the thirteenth century, the capital of Western Asia. At length, however, in the fourteenth century, on being incorporated with the Ottoman empire by the Emir Orchan, Nicæa began to decline in prosperity.
Many of the fine Greek temples and churches were then pulled down to furnish materials for mosques and other buildings. From that time the large city gradually dwindled down until, in the present day, it has become a poor paltry village of little more than a hundred houses. Yet many ruined baths and edifices standing amid gardens and corn-fields, and a large portion of the ancient walls, still indicate to the visitor the splendour and magnitude of the ancient Nicoya.