Ephesus Ancient City

Ephesus, near modern Selcuk on Turkey's Aegean coast, is one of the most completely excavated classical cities anywhere and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Greek colonists founded it in the 10th century BC on ground that was already settled, it joined the Ionian League, passed through Persian and Hellenistic hands, and came under Roman control in 129 BC when the province of Asia was formed. Most of what visitors walk through today is Roman.

The History of Ephesus

Attic and Ionian settlers founded the city around the 10th century BC on the site of Apasa, and it grew into a major trading port. Older studies put its Roman-era population as high as 225,000; more recent demographic modelling, working from an inhabited area of roughly 263 hectares, arrives at about 70,000 - still one of the largest cities in Roman Asia Minor.

Ephesus was the home of the philosopher Heraclitus. Christian tradition places John the Apostle here as well, holding that he wrote his gospel in the city and died of natural causes some time after AD 98, the only apostle not to be martyred. The city's greatest monument, the Temple of Artemis, was counted among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Systematic excavation began in 1863, when the British architect John Turtle Wood, funded by the British Museum, went looking for the Artemision; he found its pavement in 1869 and work stopped in 1874. The city itself has been dug since 1895, when Otto Benndorf resumed excavation and then founded the Austrian Archaeological Institute, which still leads the project. Finds are divided between the Ephesus Archaeological Museum in Selcuk, the Ephesos Museum in Vienna and the British Museum in London.

What to See in the Ruins

The Library of Celsus

Built in the early 2nd century AD by Gaius Julius Aquila in honour of his father, the Roman senator Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus, who is buried in a sarcophagus in a crypt beneath it - an unusual privilege inside a city. The reading room held close to 12,000 scrolls in niches around its walls. The two-storey marble facade was re-erected by archaeologists from its fallen fragments and is now the most recognisable structure on the site.

The Temple of Hadrian

A small, finely carved temple on Curetes Street, dedicated to the emperor Hadrian and dating from the 2nd century AD, with repairs in the 4th. Four columns front the entrance, the arch above carries a bust of Tyche, and the porch reliefs show scenes from the mythical foundation of the city. The plinths outside once carried imperial statues.

The Great Theatre

Cut into the western slope of Mount Pion, the theatre began in the Hellenistic period and was enlarged under the Romans to hold roughly 25,000 spectators, making it the largest gathering place in Ephesus. Its semicircular auditorium gives it acoustics good enough that concerts are still staged there. It is also the setting of the riot of the silversmiths described in Acts 19.

The Odeon

A roofed hall built around AD 150 by Publius Vedius Antoninus, seating about 1,500. It worked as a council chamber as much as a concert venue, and the tiers of seating and the stage area survive.

The Commercial Agora and the Gate of Mazeus and Mithridates

The square agora was the trading centre of the city, ringed by colonnades with shops behind them. Its southern entrance, the triple-arched Gate of Mazeus and Mithridates - also called the Gate of Augustus - was paid for by two freedmen of the emperor Augustus and dedicated to the imperial family, whose names still run across the architrave in large bronze-set letters.

Marble Street and Curetes Street

Marble Street ran from the Great Theatre to the Library of Celsus and carried the city's processions; the ruts of cart wheels are still visible in the paving. Curetes Street climbs from the library towards the Hercules Gate, lined with shops, statue bases, a mosaic pavement and, on the slope above, the terrace houses of wealthy Ephesians. Clay water pipes can be seen embedded in the street, part of the system that supplied the city.

The Fountain of Trajan

A two-storey nymphaeum on Curetes Street, dedicated to the emperor Trajan in the early 2nd century AD. A statue of the emperor stood at its centre above a basin fed by aqueduct water from the hills; only the lower structure, the basin and a few columns remain standing.

The Temple of Domitian

Also known as the Temple of the Sebastoi, this was the first temple at Ephesus given over to the cult of a reigning imperial house. After the Senate condemned Domitian's memory, the dedication was transferred to his father, Vespasian. The terrace, the vaulted substructures that carried it and fragments of a colossal imperial statue survive.

The Temple of Artemis

The temple that made the city famous stood on the plain below Ephesus. The version described by ancient writers measured about 137 by 69 metres and 18 metres high, with more than 127 columns; the last rebuilding of it was destroyed in AD 401. A single reassembled column marks the spot today, which makes the scale of the ruins in the city proper all the more striking.

The Terrace Houses

On the slope opposite the Temple of Hadrian, under a modern protective roof, stand the houses of wealthy Ephesians, built in terraces one above the next and occupied from the 1st century AD onwards. They kept mosaic floors, painted wall panels and marble revetment, and were heated by hot air run through clay pipes in the floors and walls. They carry a separate ticket, and they are the clearest picture anywhere in Turkey of how a Roman city looked from the inside.

Christian Ephesus and the End of the City

Ephesus is the first of the seven churches of Asia addressed in the Book of Revelation. Paul lived and preached in the city for around three years and wrote his first letter to the Corinthians from there, and Acts 19 records the silversmiths' riot that his preaching against the Artemis trade provoked. In AD 431 the Council of Ephesus met in the city and declared Mary Theotokos, mother of God, a decision that still shapes Christian doctrine.

The city died the way Miletus and Priene died. The Cayster river, the Kucuk Menderes, filled the harbour with silt faster than it could be dredged, and Ephesus lost the reason it existed. The population gradually moved up to Ayasuluk Hill around the Basilica of St John, which became the settlement now called Selcuk, and the classical city was left to the fields. The shoreline it once commanded is now several kilometres away.

Visiting Today

Selcuk, a few kilometres from the site, holds the Ephesus Archaeological Museum and the castle on Ayasuluk Hill. Within a short drive are the Basilica of St John, built over the apostle's grave, the grotto of the Seven Sleepers and the House of the Virgin Mary on Mount Koressos.

Kusadasi, the closest harbour, lies about 20 km west, which is why a morning among the ruins and an afternoon at anchor is such a common pairing. For anyone chartering a gulet in Turkey, Ephesus is the anchor point of the Ionian coast: Miletus, Priene and Didyma all lie within the same run south.