Ancient Ephesus was a great trading and religious city, a centre for the cult of Cybele, the Anatolian fertility goddess. In time Cybele became Artemis, the virgin goddess of the hunt and the moon, and a fabulous temple was built in her honour. When the Romans took over and made this the province of Asia, Artemis became Diana and Ephesus became the Roman provincial capital.
As a busy Roman town, Ephesus quickly acquired a sizable Christian congregation and St Paul wrote the most profound of his epistles to the Ephesians.
The site (admission US$10; open 8am-5pm daily, 830am-7pm in summer) seems to be permanently swamped with coach groups and gets extremely hot in high summer. Start exploring early in the morning, then retire to a shady restaurant to avoid the midday heat. Unfortunately, since this is what the coach parties also do, lunch time is when you're most likely to avoid the groups. Allow at least half a day for looking around, and more if you're keen on ruins.
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The Site - Ephesus
As you walk into the site you pass the Gymnasium of Vedius (2nd century AD) on your left. The road descends to the car park. To the right are the ruins of the Church of the Virgin Mary, site of the third Ecumenical Council (AD 431), which condemned the Nestorian heresy.
Continue on and you'll see remains of the Harbour Gymnasium to the right before you reach the marble-paved Harbour St, Ephesus' grandest street, which had water and sewer lines beneath the marble flagstones, 50 streetlights along its colonnades and shops along its sides. It was a legacy of the Byzantine emperor Arcadius (AD 395-408).
At the eastern end of Harbour St is the Great Theatre, skilfully reconstructed by the Romans between AD 41 and AD 117 to seat 25,000 people and still used for performances.
From the theatre, walk along the marble-paved Sacred Way, noting the remains of the city's water and sewer systems beneath the paving stones and the ruts made by wheeled vehicles. The large open space to the right of the street was the agora or marketplace, the heart of Ephesus' business life.
In AD 114, Consul Tiberius Julius Aquila erected a huge library nearby in memory of his father Celsus Polemaenus. The fine building you see now used to hold 12,000 scrolls in niches around its walls. Architectural trickery was used to make it look bigger than it really was.
On the left is the Gate of Augustus, leading into the agora.
As you turn into Curetes Way, look out for an elaborate building once thought to be a brothel but now believed to be a house. Shortly afterwards, a passage on the left leads to the communal men's toilets. The famous figure of Priapus, with the penis of most men's dreams, was found nearby. It's now in the Ephesus Museum.
Opposite the toilets is the entrance to the Terraced Houses (Yamag Evleri; admission US$20), a group of wonderful restored houses complete with frescoed walls and mosaic floors. Pompeii aside, there are few other places where you have such a strong sense of what the homes of the wealthy might really have been like. Shame, then, about the off-putting entry charge.
Further along Curetes Way you can hardly miss the impressive Corinthian-style Temple of Hadrian on the left. Dedicated to Hadrian, Artemis and the people of Ephesus in AD 118, it was reconstructed in the 5th century. Curetes Way ends at the two-storey Gate of Hercules, constructed in the 4th century AD.
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