Ephesus Ancient City - Turkey

Hello my friends. On the next leg of my journey in Turkey after the resort towns, I reached Ephesus. In my opinion this is a place you must see at least once in your life. I had already visited quite a few ancient cities in Turkey. So why did I come here, to Ephesus and pay an entrance fee of forty euros per person? Because Ephesus is one of the best preserved ancient cities in the whole world. Here you can walk on paved streets just like the ancient Romans or ancient Greeks. What's more the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world is located here. On top of that there is an incredible cat population here. How could I just pass by such a museum?

The introduction to the city of Ephesus begins with the pavilion where a one to five-hundred scale model map of the city is presented. Once upon a time merchants, bureaucrats and sailors walked along this street and everything around was not just made of grey stone. It was a living city. All travelers arriving in the city were greeted by Roman baths, because if you wanted to enter Ephesus, you had to be clean. Besides the primary duty of washing citizens, these baths also served a social function. Here a wide variety of topics, from philosophy to politics were gladly discussed. I wish I could have been there at that time. The city also had a complex water enginering system. There was plumbing and even a sewage system here. And I was very surprised when I first heard it.There were even special services monitoring that residents did not throw trash in inappropriate places.

There is an amphitheater in the ancient city and you can go inside. Elections for city council members were held here. The city was managed very effectively thanks to the administration not being gathered in the hands of a single person, but instead governed by three hundred city manager members.And various musical performances, poetry recitals and many other events were organized here. I would like to emphasize once again how lucky we were to visit this place before the scorching heat started. There was a lot of open space, but it was not sweltering hot when we went. An amazingly huge area.

Cats adapt so organically to today's urban landscape that they have really become an indispensable part of it. After the amphitheater we moved on to the City Administration building or Prytaneion. The city council members on duty were here twenty four hours a day, even at night to evaluate all kinds of applications or complaints from citizens. In ancient times fountains served the purpose of feeding the entire city and the whole plumbing system with water, rather than having a decorative function. The Fountain of Pollio was exactly like this. It was built for the people of Ephesus by a very wealthy resident of the city.

What I liked most about this ancient city is being able to walk directly with your own feet on the ruins and these ancient excavations. A little further from the fountain was a pool that was part of the city's water network. And water reached this pool via a Roman aqueduct whose source was forty kilometers away from Ephesus. In the Roman empire the emperor was considered not just a human, but a god. Here in Ephesus stood the temple of Domitian, the first Roman emperor to have a special temple built for himself and to whom everyone was forced to worship. The emperor committed many atrocities throughout the Roman Empire and specificaly in Ephesus. That is why when Christianity arrived, this temple was destroyed down to its foundations.

Then we visited the Gate of Heracles. After this gate access to the upper part of the city was provided only on foot. Cars could not pass because they were very narrow. Further ahead Curetes street stretches to the lower part of the city. Along Curetes street there were a wide variety of shops and residences that can still be observed in ruins today. The houses of the wealthiest residents of Ephesus were located here. Judging by the mosaic and various other artifacts found in the excavations, the houses were very expensive.

As we already know Roman baths were a place where people came not only to wash, but also to chat. We visited the Baths of Scholastikia. By the way Scholastikia was a Roman woman citizen who had this bath restored. People gathered here not only to wash and talk, but also to pick up books and read. And education in various sciences was given here. Everywhere here you can see the remains of pipes that supplied water and hot steam to the bath.

There was of course, a public toilet here, which was paid. Besides fulfilling its direct function many other topics, including business matters were discussed here. In the middle of the hall, there was a fountain and a water basin. How interesting that in ancient Rome there were toilets with their own running water that flushed everything. In a castle in the fourteenth or fifteenth century, on the other hand it consisted of a simple balcony without a sewage system. And here the ceramic pipes that brought the water are fully preserved. And there are also sewage drains.

The square in front of the Library of Celsus is probably the most lively, most crowded place in today's Ephesus. Perhaps the best preserved building in Ephesus is the library built in honor of Tiberius Julius Celsus, a famous philanthropist and Roman proconsul. More than twelve thousand parchment scrolls were stored inside at the same time. When a fire broke out in the second century and destroyed almost all the interior decoration, the front facade remained undamaged. Another reason it is so well preserved is that the Goths, who captured Ephesus after the collapse of the Roman empire, were not interested in books. They didn't have much business in this building. So they bypassed this building and it can now be observed as it existed in ancient times. Under the floor of the library lies the tomb of the philanthropist Tiberius Julius Celsus himself. Because his son decided to build the library right over this tomb for some reason.

The interesting thing is that directly opposite the Library of Celsus was a brothel. And one could go there discretely through an underground passage. That's why the sentence I'm going to the library. didn't always mean the man was actually going to the library. 😄

We continued to get to know Ephesus by passing through the Gate of Mazaeus and Mithridates, which resembles an ancient Roman arch. The ticket price for Ephesus includes a visit to the Ephesus Experience Museum. At the entrance they give you a free audio guide. You tell them which language you choose and they give you the audio guide suitable for your language. The museum is really cool especially the moments that make you feel as if you are riding in a horse-drawn carriage and then entering the city. Everything is like three-D, there are special effects. I really liked the narration of history. A tremendous interactive museum telling the rise and fall of one of the greatest cities of antiquity. At the exit of the museum a souvenir shop awaits you where you can buy a wide variety of symbols of the city of Ephesus.

Afterwards the place we saw was the Great Theatre of Ephesus. It could host up to twentyfive thousand spectators here. Because it was built over a very long period, it incorporates traces of both ancient Greek and ancient Roman architecture within its structure. Once upon a time the Apostle Paul preached in this very great theater, trying to guide the locals to the path of the Gospel. They in response, replied, Great is Artemis, save us. But unfortunately this amphitheater is currently under restoration. However, when we were in Aspendos, we visited the amphitheater there and it was almost as big as this one.

Then we toured Harbor street or Arcadiane. It was eleven meters wide and stretched from the Great Theater to the harbor. Another interesting fact was that plumbing ran underneath it and it was illuminated with torches on the right and left sides at night.

At the end of our Ephesus tour, we decided to take a look at the ruins of what was once the Church of Mary. And this was the first Church of Mary in the whole world. This structure also has a rich history. In its own right, it was built on the ruins of an ancient Roman temple dedicated to the cult of Emperor Hadrian. When this temple was dedicated to Mary, there was a baptistery here where anyone who wished was baptized.

Involuntarily we came to the end of our tour of ancient Ephesus. We walked here for about three and a half hours. I liked the museum. The most interesting thing here was the need for an audio guide or another guide. Because just walking and looking, nothing is understood. So we listened to the audio guide, digested all this information and it was quite interesting.

The ticket is not cheap, forty euros as with other tourist attractions in Turkey. But it is definitely worth it, because I really made sure that this city is much better preserved than the ancient cities I visited before. I had already been to Side, Aspendos, Myra and many other places anyway. Here, the whole city is of course very well preserved to this day, but I moved on. I couldn't even imagine what else was waiting for me in Turkey because I was full of good impressions. And it only remained for me to guess what Turkey would surprise me with tomorrow. I was going to Izmir.

Before Izmir however, I decided to take a look at one last place before leaving. This was the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Today only ruins and a single column standing alone remain of this temple.

That's it for today my friends. I will share my Izmir memories with you in my next posts. See you soon.