Living together or at least side-by-side in multiethnic cities of the Ottoman Empire implied adapting to a certain extent to the others’ rhythms, calendars, perception of time. This adaptation presupposed some knowledge of the others’ cultural world or it could not take place. The present article scrutinizes the situation in two such cities, Bitola (former Manastır) in today’s Republic of Macedonia and Smyrna (today’s Izmir). Although Bitola and Izmir had different functions, a different relative importance in the Empire, they were home for different groups, similarities of interaction modus between these human groups are striking. This article intends to present the hypothesis that the anthropological experience of the time was a different one from the other former Ottoman domains, a synthesis that was lost later as the Ottoman Empire became a mostly homogenized national states, with the fracture of the Empire in the early 20th century.