Turkey 2026 - Day 14 Selçuk

We are picked up at 9 AM for our day long tour. First stop is the reputed final home of the Virgin Mary. We pull into a huge parking lot on the side of a hill fairly close to Ephesus. There are already six buses here that our guide says come from cruise ships docked in nearby Kuşadası.

After a fairly short time in line, we get to the house. We cannot use cameras inside, but here is a view from the outside:

One of my many problems with organized religion is that so much is supposed to be accepted on faith. This is just contrary to the way that a scientist thinks so, as usual, I have questions... What is the support for this being Mary's last home? There seem to be two facts: Before he was crucified, Jesus ordered the apostles to disperse to spread the world. John was sent to Asia Minor. It is also mentioned in the bible that John should take care of Mary. We will be visiting John's reputed tomb later today. If it is true that John was here, Mary should have been also. Finally, a bedridden Augustinian nun in Germany, Anne Catherine Emmerich, reported visions in the early 1800's indicating that Mary lived on a hillside facing Ephesus on the left side of the road to Jerusalem. Using these clues, a French priest in 1881 found a small stone building that he claimed was Mary's house. Almost no one took him seriously, but ten years later, a pair of missionaries rediscovered the ruins of the house. They also found that there was an oral tradition in the local families that go back to the early days of Christianity that Mary had lived here. It is important to point out that when the Catholic Church investigated whether to beatify Emmerich, they found that the guy who wrote down most of what Emmerich said that she saw had made up most of what was written. Count me among the skeptics!

I find that it is ironic that the name of the place in Turkish is Meryemana because Mary-mania is sure going on here:

I think that you can even buy holy water at the store that comes from the spring located close to the house.

Thankful that we have gotten out of here before the tour buses as they will also be going to Ephesus from here, we head to Ephesus. There is too much to say about the history of Ephesus over a period of nearly 2,500 years, but here is the short version.

Our guide tells us that there have actually been three or four cities of Ephesus. The first was built in the 10th century BCE by Greek colonists on the site of an even older city called Apasa. It turns out that our hotel is on the hill where it was built. The city had a port on the Kayster river that allowed access to the nearby Aegean Sea. With trade came wealth. The locals used some of that wealth to build the Temple of Artemis, considered one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world.

In 356 BCE, a crazy shopkeeper named Herostatus, hoping to be famous, burned down the temple. In a way, he succeeded although he was executed for his act. He became a meme for someone who commits a crime to become famous! When, in 334 BCE, Alexander the Great defeated the Persians who were controlling Ephesus at the time, he saw that the city had not yet completed the rebuild on the Temple. He offered to pay to complete the construction if he could have his name on it. The townspeople refused saying that it was not fitting for one god to build a temple to another god and finished construction themselves.

As the river Kayster silted up, the area around Ephesus became marshy, which led to an outbreak of malaria. This caused the Greek general in charge of the city to forcibly move everyone to a new site about 2 miles away and closer to the sea.

For the next 250 years, control of Ephesus switched between the Greeks, the Egyptians (under Pharoah Ptolemy III) and the Romans with the Romans finally gaining control of Ephesus in 129 BCE. This began the golden age of Ephesus. Ephesus, with its harbor bringing in goods from all of the world grew to have a population of around 75,000 people, second in the Roman Empire to Rome.

Things were going really well for Ephesus until the Goths destroyed the Temple of Artemis and the city in 263 CE. The Roman Emperor Constantine the Great rebuilt much of the city and built new public baths.

After the splitting up of the Roman Empire in 395 CE, Ephesus was still probably the second most important city in the Byzantine Empire after Constantinople, but despite frequent dredging, the Kayster river and its Aegean port continued to silt up until the harbor was unusable. With the end of trade, Ephesus' influence waned. 

During this period, building began back on the original site of the city in what is now Selçuk. Byzantine Emperor Justinian built the Basilica of St. John in the 6th century CE and the aqueduct to supply it with water. When the Arabs began raiding Selçuk in the 7th century, a citadel was built next to the basilica to protect it. All of these were built with pieces of buildings from Ephesus.

This gradual shift away from Ephesus and toward Selçuk continued with the construction of the İsa Bey Mosque in 1374 CE and the city was finally abandoned in the 15th century CE.

This sounds like a lot of detail, but I've really only skimmed the history! Now let's look at what we can see now. Ephesus sits on the side of a hill, and we come into it on the uphill side. Our guide tells us that this was the administrative part of the city. Just inside the gates which are now long gone, there is a bath house:

Because malaria was a constant threat, anyone coming into the city had to have a bath before going on with their business. Next to the public baths is the gymnasium:

Even though archeologists have been working in Ephesus since the mid-1800's, you can see that there is a lot that is still partially buried. The gymnasium was part training facility for public games, part educational facility. Like the public baths, this was only for men. Looking the other way, we see this:

The museum in Selçuk long ago ran out of space for artifacts so there are all sorts of pieces lying all over the place. Notice how many of these columns are cut off, but all about the same size? This is because a 15 ft long marble column weighed too much to move easily. So the Roman's chopped them in thirds, cut a hole in the top and used a iron rod to hold pieces together - early rebar!

The next building that is still in pretty good shape is a theatre called the Odeion:

This is similar to the one that we saw in Myra, but not quite as large. There is not much left of the stage, but the columns out front are better preserved than in Myra. In addition to plays, it hosted political meetings, concerts and debates.

Next is the Temple of Domitian that scholars think might have had a lighthouse on top of it:

This would make sense as the temple is located on the top of the hill that separates the upper plateau (where all of the buildings we've seen so far are) from the lower town where the housing, library and coliseum are. What is most notable about this building is that some of the last residents of Ephesus thought to protect their most valuable statues from the coming looters by burying them under the foundation. Here is the most famous one:

This is Artemis, protector of Ephesus. But unlike Artemis the huntress of Greek mythology, this is more like Artemis the Earth Mother. This statue would have been in the center of the Temple of Artemis and was likely buried just before the Goths sacked the city and destroyed the temple in 263 CE.

Here is the view down the hill from this temple:

This gives a better idea of how huge Ephesus is. This main road would have had shops along the right side and what they call terrace houses on the left hillside where the powerful and wealthy lived. The big building in the upper center is the Library of Celsus, and the harbor would have been roughly in the upper left of the picture. The view back gives you an idea of the elevations in the city:

The big metal enclosure in the upper left of the first of these two pictures was constructed by the Austrian Archeological Society, who have been excavating in Ephesus for nearly 100 years, to protect some of the terrace houses from further degradation. Here are some pictures of the insides of some of these houses:

I think our tendency is to view ancient peoples are primitive. The owners of these homes were anything but. They had indoor plumbing, hot and cold running water and under floor heating. The houses were all pointed toward the sea so that they got cooling from the sea breezes in addition to the cooling that came from having the backside of the homes buried in the hillside. There was also art in almost every room.

How did they manage to operate and maintain such large homes? Our guide tells us that at least half and maybe as much as 90% of the population were slaves. This doesn't mean that they were primitive either. In addition to more menial roles, these slaves would have been chefs, artisans and educators of the children. Clearly, it was good to be an elite in ancient Ephesus!

From the top/back of the terrace houses, we get a great view of the lower part of the city:

The big cranes are working on the Great Theatre of Ephesus. There were temples and shops along the right of this main road. There is also, just on the other side of the gates in the lower left, a road that would have gone straight to the harbor; the area to the left of the main road would have been where the merchants just off the boat would sell their goods. The Library of Celsus is just off to the lower left.

Going down the stairs from here to the road below was not much fun on my knees, but we are rewarded by a nice view of the Library of Celsus:

Constructed in about 110 CE as a funerary monument for Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus, the former proconsul of Asia, it became the 3rd largest library in the Roman Empire with over 12,000 scrolls. Here is another view of the library after I photoshopped out many of the bazillion people who were there:

The interior of the library and all of the scrolls were destroyed by fire in 262 CE, but it is not known whether the first was started by the invading Goths or by the major earthquake that struck the city in the same year. The facade remained intact until it was destroyed in another earthquake in the 10th or 11th century CE, but was reconstructed in the 1970's.

Next to the library are the gate of Mazaeus and Mithridates:

These are two guys who were slaves of Emperor Augustus and subsequently freed. It was not uncommon for freed slaves to become rich as agents for their former owners and Mazaeus and Mithridates clearly did so, as they were able to commission the construction of these gates which lead to the commercial part of the city. These gates would also have been a powerful reminder to the enslaved populus that anything was possible.

On the other side of the gates is the road that led to the harbor:

It is said that Roman General Marc Antony and Cleopatra strolled hand-in-hand along this road and that the locals had poured red wine on the road to celebrate their visit in 33 CE. That was the start of the red carpet! But I think of this road as a little more like customs and border control. There would have been some sort of official at the harbor end of the street checking on the comings and goings. There was no place for the people arriving to go except straight to the commercial area:

The columns would have been part of semi-permanent shops while there would have been tents set up in the grassy area for merchants who were only here once in a while.

Our tour would have concluded with a visit to the Great Theatre of Ephesus, but it is currently being repaired. Here is a picture I took as I was leaving:

This theatre would have held near 25,000 people sorted into three horizontal sections like the theatre in Myra. The apostle Paul lived and preached in Ephesus for about three years and caused a riot in the theatre when the silver guild objected to the devaluation of Artemis by Christianity, because it would cause them to lose revenue. The acoustics of the theatre are so good that even in the modern age, Sting, Elton John and Luciano Pavarotti have performed here.

We've been walking for a long time so it is time for lunch. We stop at a restaurant in Selçuk that we had been looking at for a dinner. We share about six different mese dishes and each person gets their own choice of protein. Feeling much better, we head toward the Basilica of St. John.

There is some historical evidence that John the apostle lived in Ephesus for the last 30 years of his life, from about 70-100 CE and is thought to have written the Gospel according to John there. He was also reputed to have been buried in a small church on top of the hill where our hotel is located. I say reputed because when his tomb was opened during the reign of Constantine the Great (306-337 CE), no bones were discovered.

Whether John was buried here or not, the Basilica of St. John is a very real place. It was constructed in the shape of a cross by Justinian the Great in 548 CE and was in pretty good shape until the 12th century CE. The main entrance is through the Gate of Persecution:

It apparently got that name due to a mistake on the part of two Frenchmen, who mistook the artwork including pictures of eight saints as a sort of history of persecution of early Christians. I believe that much of this gate has been reconstructed. Inside the walls, there is no roof, so it is a lot of "outside":

If the building materials look like them came from Ephesus, that is because they did. You can also see the fortress in the background of one of these pictures which was built to protect the church.

And of course, we have John's tomb in the back of the church:

We also get some great views of the area including the one remaining column from the Temple of Artemis:

you can just see it slightly below the two tour buses. Since our guide admits that no one really knows for sure where the temple was located and the pillar was just placed by archeologists at their best guess, we see no reason to hike across the fairly marshy ground to see it.

After being dropped off at our hotel with instructions to be ready at 7:30 AM for our drive to the Izmir airport tomorrow morning, we sit down with our Turkish teas and plan our evening. Our lunch was big enough that no one is too anxious to have a big meal. We finally decide to walk down into town and look for a cafe selling pide - a sort of Turkish pizza shaped like an elongated football. We find one very close to the aqueduct below the Basilica. After dinner, we walk further into the newer part of town, discover a couple more of the arches of the aqueduct and stop at a nut and sweet shop to pick up some items to take home with us.

Tomorrow, we have a very, very long day. Stay tuned!

Turkey 2026 - Day 13 Selçuk

Today, we have a free day. We discover that there is an Ephesus museum only a few blocks from our hotel and we decide to visit it. But before that, we go back to the art gallery. Like the gallery in Cappadocia, the Turkish government supports their business by paying for the shipping, tariffs and taxes on qualified purchases. We know that there is typically a minimum purchase that meets these requirements, but when I ask what the minimum is, the salesman does not understand what I am asking. When we go to pay for our purchase, there is some back-and-forth between the cashier and the salesman and then the salesman tells us that the purchase is too little money for the government to reimburse them for shipping. He says that it is usually items that are 34 cm or larger (our item is 30 cm). We ask whether they would be able to ship them if we bought two that were the same size. He says that this would be acceptable. That sets us off on a search through the gallery that we both like. It takes a while, but we find another mosaic that we like. For the final step of purchase, the salesman asks if he can take a picture of us with our purchases. He says that this is encouragement and motivation for the artists whose creations are sold here. How could we resist?

The Ephesus Archeological Museum is just down the hill from our hotel. This beautiful museum opened in 1964 and was built to house the most important discoveries uncovered during the excavations at Ephesus that had not already been "stolen" by European museums. Here is what I mean. From 1867 when large-scale excavations began at Ephesus until 1905, artifacts discovered were moved to the British Museum in London and from 1905-1923, all additional artifacts discovered were moved to the Ephesos Museum in Vienna. It was only in 1923 when the Turkish government said "no more" and prohibited additional artifacts from leaving the country. In 1929, Selçuk became a storage depot for the more recent artifacts discovered and eventually, the pile of stuff became so big that they needed a larger place to store and display them. Here are some of the more interesting pieces that I saw:

You might think that the statue on the right of the second row doesn't look very Roman. You might even think it looks kind of Egyptian - and you would be right. Part of Ephesus' heyday was during the time when Augustus Caesar was the Roman emperor and Cleopatra and general Marc Anthony were an item. As such, the Egyptians were held in high regard and to show their respect, a temple to the Egyptian gods was erected in Ephesus.

It is getting toward lunchtime and during our search for a place to eat, we come across this clever piece of art:

We finally find a place on the top of the hill above our hotel. This place is an old estate that is part restaurant/part gallery/part hotel. I am particularly struck by the old door mounted on one of the walls:

Our waiter is a Kurdish guy from eastern Türkiye who speaks excellent English. He tells us that the owner of the estate now lives in Los Angeles where their other gallery is located. Unlike most of this trip, there is a dog, instead of a cat, sleeping under our table. There is also a very nice view of the Isa Bey Mosque:

Since we have been overfed at every meal, we decide to only order mese, but when they bring six of them plus bread, it is still too much! After lunch, Chris and Mark want to visit their gallery. Beth joins them while I go back to the hotel to work on this blog. While there, Beth is able to take a video of the dramatic color change that happens with a silk rug when you turn it around:

Pretty cool, don't you think?! They clearly have to take this effect into account when coming up with the design.

Back at the hotel, we sit down in the patio with a nice bottle of wine. Then we decide to go back to the same restaurant for dinner. We confuse our waiter by ordering three dishes to share between four people, but this is just the right amount of food!

Tomorrow, we are off to Ephesus. Stay tuned!

Turkey 2026 - Day 12 Antalya to Selçuk

When we set up this trip, we discussed how to get from Antalya to Selçuk, which is the closest town to the ancient city of Ephesus on the Aegean coast of western Türkiye. We finally decided that it would take less overall time if we road in a van for 5 hours than to take the 30 min ride to the Antalya airport, check in and fly to Izmir, and then take another hour in a van to get to Selçuk. So, after a final breakfast in the garden, we say goodbye to the kittens, haul our bags back downstairs, and meet our driver from two days ago for the ride to Selçuk. With him is a young woman wearing a hijab, the head covering worn by practicing Muslims. She tells us that she is the daughter of the driver and she is along to keep him company (and awake) for the 5 hr drive back to Antalya after we are dropped off.

I don't have any pictures from the drive because it was, frankly, not very interesting. We retraced part of our path from two days ago and then turned northwestward up the one valley that goes in that direction through the Taurus mountains. The mountains are pretty enough, but when we go over the pass, we find ourselves on a high plateau with almost no trees. There must be plenty of wind because there are giant windmills along the ridgeline.

After a couple hours of this, we start gradually descending. The air is getting more humid and we start to see some trees. We stop at a rest area that is very similar to what you would see on an American interstate highway and resist the urge to buy one of the dozen or so choices of baklava that they have for sale.

Finally, we make it to our hotel which is on top of a hill up a dead-end street barely wide enough for our van to navigate. I'm really glad I'm not the one driving! Our hotel appears to be an old estate. There are two main buildings separated by a courtyard and a pool. There is an outdoor bar where you can get a bottle of wine or a diet coke whenever you want and all of the common areas are covered with Turkish rugs.

Since we have been sitting all day, we decide to go out for a walk. Just down the hill from our hotel are the ruins of the Isa Bey Hamam:

The bathhouse was likely constructed in the late 14th century CE at the same time as the Isa Bey Mosque just down the street. That makes it one of the newer ruins in this town! Across the street, we notice this:

This appears to be connected to the art gallery down the street. We stop in, are greeted by a salesman/geologist and are invited to view their art. We see vases similar to the one that we bought in Istanbul, other sorts of pots and lots of mosaics. This area has a long history of Roman rule so the mosaics are what we are most drawn to. Beth sees one with a tree-of-life motif in the earth tones that dominate our house. One of our defense mechanisms to spending money is to put off any purchase until the next day. We weren't able to do that in Istanbul (not that we regret that purchase), but we've got two more days here, so we tell the salesman that we will be back tomorrow. Before we go, the salesman presents a sack of ceramic evil eyes amulets in a wide variety of colors and asks us to pick 5 each as gifts. Known as naẓars, these amulets are supposed to protect the wearer from an evil eye - a sort of malevolent stare, usually inspired by envy. 

Across the street from the gallery is the Isa Bey Mosque, built in the late fourteenth century CE. The mosque is not very photogenic, but just up the hill from it we see this:

This is the western wall of the Basilica of Saint John the Theologian. We will be back here in two days, so I'll say more about it then, but it is reputed to be where the apostle John was originally buried.

On the other side of the hill close to the downtown area, we get a view of an old aqueduct built during the Byzantine period and the Ayasuluk Citadel behind it:

The citadel was built in the 7th and 8th century CE by the Byzantines to protect the area from Arab raids. It is mostly constructed of material scavenged from nearby Ephesus. It also appears (from the nests) that they have storks here, at least in the summertime!

All this walking up and down hills is making us hungry. We had passed a restaurant back near the mosque, so we reverse our path to get back to it. As usual, there is way too much food, but it is all delicious and we head back to the hotel happy.

Tomorrow, we have a free day before ending our vacation at Ephesus. Enjoy!

Turkey 2026 - Day 11 Antalya

We have a free day today, and as nice as it would be to just lounge in the garden soaking up sunshine, we decide to go visit the lower Duden waterfall where the Duden river flows into the Mediterranean.

After breakfast, we ask the hotel clerk to call us a taxi to avoid being scammed and in short order, a rather beaten-up yellow cab arrives for the 20 min ride to the waterfall. The driver doesn't speak much English but wants to know where we are from. When we tell him that we are from the US, he has only two things to say - he wants to know what we think of Trump, and he complains about the cost of fuel in Türkiye - a place that already has high inflation.

After a ride along the coast, he pulls over and points us in the general direction of the Mediterranean. Fortunately, we can hear the sound of rushing water and see a big sign that says Duden Park - we must be in the right place! As we walk closer to the water, we see this statue:

This is Plancia Magna of Perge, an ancient Roman city about 10 miles inland from Antalya. Magna's father was a Roman Senator and provincial governor in the early 2nd century CE. As an adult, Magna was a politician and religious leader. She was also a euergetes, which is a Greek title meaning philanthropist, and she financed many of the building projects in Perge with her own money. This portrait sculpture was found during excavations in Perge and is sitting in this spot as an example showing the level to which women could rise during the Roman Empire. Nice!

You can just see the waterfall in the background of the picture above, but here are a couple of better pictures including some crazies who really want to get up-close-and-personal with these very nice waterfalls:

We walk upstream a little way and find that in the summer; they also have zip lines and river rafting (which ends at a very serious metal fence to avoid anyone going over the falls). But now that it isn't tourist season, it is just a nice nature setting in a pretty urban place:

You can just see a blue walkway in the upper left of this picture. We go to check it out and find that the city has both a bike path and walkway along the coast back toward the old town. Even better, the walking surface is spongy, so it is less bad on our old joints! It is about a 6-mile walk back to the hotel. We decide that if we get tired, we can always stop and get a taxi back to the hotel, but I have a feeling that once we start, we will stubborn our way to the end.

I am right, but for much of the route, we are walking through various city parks. We stop once for a snack and a second time for gelato, so we aren't too worn out by the time we get back to an area that we recognize. It also puts us in the right place to try to get a good sunset picture. This time, we are rewarded:

We enjoyed the restaurant last night so much that we went back a second time. Almost all of the waiters are in their 50's or above and I have a feeling that these are the grandsons of the restaurant founder.

After dinner, there is one more place that I want to get some pictures of; Hadrian's Gate:

Constructed to commemorate Hadrian's visit to Antalya in 130 CE, it was later incorporated into the walls surrounding the city and its harbor. The bottom part of the tower that you can see to the right of the gate was built in Roman times, but the top part was rebuild in the thirteenth century CE while the Persians controlled the city. For many centuries, the gate was built into the city walls and not used. It was only rediscovered in the 1950's when the city wall collapsed and was restored in 1959.

Our trip is coming to an end. Tomorrow, we have a long van ride to the town of Selçuk, which is the closest town to the ancient city of Ephesus. Stay tuned!