Greetings from Turkey!!
Yesterday we had a day that we're not used to anymore since moving to London: An entire day of travel. We left the flat at 7:30am, were at Heathrow by 9am, caught our four-hour flight to Istanbul at 10:30am, and arrived (with the two-hour time change) at 4:30pm. We had a two-hour layover, which we happily spent in the First Class lounge drinking gin and tonics, then took a one-hour flight south to Izmir on the Adriatic coast. We arrived at 8pm, but our promised ride to our final destination left without us (muzzerf*ckers), so we took a public bus an hour farther south to the ancient town of Selcuk. We found our way from the bus stop to our guesthouse by 10pm (also: There is no joy like the joy of being dropped at a random Turkish bus stop in BFE at 10pm and figuring it out from there. Just saying).
So we woke up this morning in Selcuk, which was formerly the ancient Roman Empire city of Ephesus. In Biblical times, Ephesus was the fourth-largest city in the Roman Empire, and boasted 250,000 citizens, lighted streets, running water, and is known in the Bible from Paul's letters to the Ephesians (yes that's right, my blog title is a Bible joke. Go offensive or go home). The ruins of Ephesus are massive, and the most-visited site in Turkey.
After an early breakfast, we walked a little over a mile on a shady promenade to the entrance to Ephesus. It was a lovely morning, but predicted to be in the 90s later in the day, so our hope was to see the site before the heat and the tour groups descended. Unfortunately we hadn't expected Ephesus, nor the hordes of tour groups, to be quite so huge.
So how big is this excavated city? It's best described as a ginormous theme park dedicated to Roman ruins. And even given that, only 20% of the site has been excavated; random ruins and artifacts are strewn about, even used as benches and path markings. Just one of these stones would earn its own museum in the US, but here there is so much of it that it's literally tossed aside.
Entering through the main gate, the ancient main promenade sweeps downward to the breathtaking Library of Celsus, the symbol of Ephesus. In its day, it was the third largest library in the world, after the Alexandria (as in, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World) and Pergamum Libraries. In its heyday, Celsus once held over 12,000 texts.
Beyond the Library is the, again, massive Great Theater. We've seen a lot of ancient stadiums lately in Arles, Nimes, and Cyprus, and this one was equally as hulking. It seated 25,000 people, and featured gladiator matches in Biblical times....and rock concerts until as recently as the 1990s when, I presume, someone noticed all the spilled beer and general destruction, and thought perhaps that should cease.
Ephesus also features a famous ancient brothel (or, a "House of Love" as the UNESCO signage so adorably euphemizes it), ancient latrines (an outdoor, fully visible, let's-all-join-hands-and-poop-together public toilet), and the ruins of multiple fountains and marketplaces. It also boasts a second theater, the Odeon, but at just 1,400 seats, it paled in comparison to the Great Theater.
For an extra fee (which I paid begrudgingly), we visited the Terraced Houses on the city's main street. These are incredibly intact residents' homes from ancient times, and the survival of the wall art and floor mosaics is stunning. We'd seen the world's best-preserved ancient floor mosaics in Paphos, Cyprus last year, but these houses were just as amazing, given that the surviving wall art featured graffiti, portraits, and even shopping lists.
By this time it was 1pm, hell-hot, and crowded; we decided we'd sucked as much fun as we could from Ephesus, so we headed back to Selcuk via the promenade. We stopped halfway there to visit, and I am not joking, one of the last existing Seven Wonders of the Ancient World (the Pyramids of Giza are another). The formerly massive Temple of Artemis used to stand here in Selcuk; today, the site is pretty much parked next to a freeway, and is ungated. Despite Matt's warnings that I would not be impressed with the ruins, I still found myself massively underwhelmed. Essentially, it's a big pillar in a field. Everything else was destroyed by earthquakes, sackings, lootings....but yeah. All that's left of the temple is a big phallic symbol with a stork's nest on top (those birds seemed to have claimed all the tall pillars here).
We had a much-needed lunch of kebaps and spinach pie, then headed to last site of our day: The Basilica of St. John. The Apostle John lived here in Ephesus, and on this hilltop, he supposedly wrote his Gospel. Per his wishes, he's also supposedly entombed here too; the Byzantine Emperor then built a huge Basilica over the site to honor St. John. However, like much else in the region, earthquakes and religious wars destroyed it. The tomb is still here, and atop the hill is now the restored Ayasuluk Castle. It's quite an impressive sight. As for Biblical legends, apparently St. John brought the Virgin Mary here to Ephesus as well, where she died in a nearby house.
Note that we did not visit Mary's House; while I do love dead things, I have a very low tolerance for religious fanaticism, and the warning of "keening pilgrims" at the house was enough to send me running in the opposite direction. 'Nuff said.
So after a long, hot, dusty day touring, we hauled our sweaty selves back to our little guesthouse for naps and Turkish tea on the rooftop at sunset.
2025-02-07