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!