Selçuk · TR

Ephesus Archaeological Site

Ephesus is the grandest ancient city you can still walk through in Turkey, a UNESCO World Heritage site on the outskirts of Selçuk where marble streets, temples, fountains and a vast hillside theatre survive in startling completeness. Once the capital of Rome's province of Asia and home to perhaps 200,000 people, it was a bustling harbour city, a centre of the cult of Artemis, and a cradle of early Christianity. Today it draws more than a million visitors a year and is widely considered Turkey's most important cultural heritage site. What makes Ephesus unforgettable is not a single ruin but the sheer density of them: the two-storey façade of the Library of Celsus, the colonnaded Curetes Street lined with temples and monuments, and the Great Theatre carved into the slope of Mount Pion, big enough to seat 24,000 spectators. Add the hidden gem of the Terrace Houses—with their frescoes, mosaics and underfloor heating—and you get an unusually intimate picture of how wealthy Romans actually lived. The ancient city came under Roman control in 129 BC, and it is the Roman Imperial layer that gives the site much of its splendour.