Ephesus

Where it sits. Ephesus lies three kilometres from the town of Selçuk in İzmir Province, on the Aegean side of Turkey, about 70 kilometres south of İzmir itself. The ruins occupy a valley between two hills, Panayırdağ and Bülbüldağ, and the thing that strikes most visitors is what is missing: the sea. Ephesus was a great harbour city, and the Küçük Menderes river — the ancient Cayster — silted its port so persistently that the coast is now some five kilometres west. Successive administrations dredged, rebuilt and eventually relocated the harbour, and the abandonment of the city in the Byzantine period is largely a story about mud. The Arcadian Way, the marble avenue that once ran from the theatre to the quays, now ends in a field.

Four cities in one place. The settlement moved several times. An Archaic Greek city clustered around the sanctuary of Artemis; Lysimachus, one of Alexander's successors, refounded it on the present site around 290 BC and walled Bülbüldağ; Rome made it capital of the province of Asia, and by the second century AD it was among the largest cities of the empire, with population estimates commonly in the range of 200,000. The Temple of Artemis, counted among the seven wonders of the ancient world and rebuilt repeatedly after fire and flood, stood on the plain toward Selçuk; a single reassembled column in a marshy field is all that remains above ground. Christian Ephesus matters as much: Paul spent some three years here and wrote to the Corinthians from the city, the Third Ecumenical Council met here in 431, and the Basilica of St John was built over what tradition holds to be the evangelist's grave.

What you actually see. The standard route runs downhill from the upper gate, which saves a climb. It passes the Odeon, a roofed council chamber for about 1,500; the state agora; the Memmius Monument; and the Temple of Hadrian on Curetes Street, whose arch carries a Tyche head and a Medusa. Halfway down, the Terrace Houses occupy a covered enclosure entered on a separate ticket — six residential units on stepped terraces with mosaic floors, marble wall revetment and frescoes, giving a picture of domestic wealth that almost nowhere else in the Roman east can match. At the bottom stands the Library of Celsus, built between about 110 and 135 by Tiberius Julius Aquila for his father, a Roman senator whose sarcophagus lies in a crypt beneath the floor. Its facade was re-erected between 1970 and 1978 by the Austrian Archaeological Institute, an anastylosis using original blocks — which is worth knowing, because the building was a heap of rubble for centuries. Beyond it, the Great Theatre seats around 24,000 against the slope of Panayırdağ and is where the silversmiths of Ephesus rioted against Paul, as recorded in Acts.

On screen. Ephesus is an unusual case: one of the most reproduced ancient cities in film design and almost never a filming location. Turkish authorities restrict feature work inside the archaeological zone, so productions needing a Roman east have gone elsewhere — Paul, Apostle of Christ (2018), set largely in Rome but concerned with the same world Ephesus belonged to, was shot in Malta; the 2016 Ben-Hur used Matera and Cinecittà; Troy (2004), set barely 300 kilometres north at Hisarlık, was filmed in Malta and Mexico without touching Turkey. What Ephesus does host is documentary work, concerts staged in the Great Theatre and the Odeon over the decades, and the annual light-and-music events that the site management permits. The Library facade, meanwhile, is a stock reference in production design and in video games, which is why it feels familiar to people who have never seen a film shot here.

Nearby and connected. Selçuk holds the Ephesus Archaeological Museum with the two multi-breasted Artemis statues, the Basilica of St John on Ayasuluk Hill, and the İsa Bey Mosque of 1375. The House of the Virgin Mary, a small stone chapel on Bülbüldağ identified in the nineteenth century on the strength of a German nun's visions and since visited by several popes, sits seven kilometres up a switchback road. Şirince, a hill village of Greek houses now given over to fruit wine, is 12 kilometres east.

Getting there and timing. Trains and buses reach Selçuk from İzmir in about ninety minutes; the site is a short taxi or a 45-minute walk. Cruise passengers arrive from Kuşadası, 20 kilometres south, in coach convoys that hit the site between ten and two — arriving at opening or after three avoids most of it. Two entrances, upper and lower, allow a one-way downhill walk if you arrange transport at the other end. Ephesus is among the better Roman sites for wheelchair access on its main marble axis, although the Terrace Houses and the theatre involve steps and steep ground.