İzmir, Aegean · Turkey
A Roman city of a quarter of a million people, with marble streets you walk down and a library facade still standing two storeys high.
Photo: Benh LIEU SONG · CC BY-SA 3.0
Ephesus was one of the largest cities of the Roman world — estimates run to about 250,000 people at its peak, making it perhaps the second city of the eastern empire after Alexandria. It was a port, though the harbour silted up centuries ago and the sea is now five kilometres away, which is both why the city declined and why so much of it survives: it was abandoned rather than built over.
What that means for a visitor is unusual. At most classical sites you look at foundations and imagine. At Ephesus you walk down the actual marble-paved Curetes Street, past shopfronts, fountains, a public latrine with the seats still in place, and the two-storey facade of the Library of Celsus, into a theatre that held 24,000 people. The scale and the state of preservation are closer to Pompeii than to anything else in the eastern Mediterranean.
The town of Selçuk sits three kilometres away beneath a Byzantine castle and is where you should stay. It holds the last standing column of the Temple of Artemis — one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, of which almost nothing remains — plus the Ephesus Archaeological Museum, the Basilica of St John, and a pleasant small-town Turkish atmosphere that the site itself lacks.
Why visit
Ephesus is the single best-preserved classical city in the Mediterranean and it is reachable in an hour from İzmir, which makes it an unusually efficient piece of archaeology.
Curetes Street and the Marble Road are paved with the original stone, rutted by cartwheels, running downhill between colonnades, shopfronts and fountains. This is not a reconstruction and it is not foundations — it is a street.
A two-storey marble facade of 117 AD, built as a tomb-monument for a Roman senator, with statues in niches representing wisdom, knowledge, intelligence and virtue. It held around 12,000 scrolls and its reconstructed front is the image of Ephesus.
Six Roman apartments built into the hillside, with mosaic floors, frescoed walls, marble cladding, heated floors and running water — the domestic life of the wealthy, preserved under a modern protective roof. A separate ticket and most people skip it.
Cut into the hillside and still standing, with the paved Harbour Street running from its foot towards where the sea used to be. It is where St Paul is said to have addressed the Ephesians, and it is still used for occasional concerts.
A small Turkish town with a castle, storks nesting on the aqueduct, one of Turkey's best archaeological museums, and the last column of a Wonder of the Ancient World — plus far better and cheaper food than anywhere near the site.
Main attractions
The site itself takes three to four hours. Selçuk and the surrounding sites fill the rest of a second day.
Built in 117 AD as a monument and tomb for the Roman governor Celsus, whose sarcophagus lies beneath it. The facade was reconstructed from original fragments in the 1970s and rises two storeys with columns, niches and statues.
Tip It faces east and is best photographed in the morning. The gate beside it leads to the Agora.
Six luxury apartments on the hillside above Curetes Street, occupied from the 1st to the 7th centuries, with mosaic floors, wall frescoes, marble panelling, underfloor heating and piped water. Excavation and conservation are ongoing and visible.
Tip A separate and slightly expensive ticket, and easily the best part of Ephesus. Most visitors walk past the entrance. Do not.
The main axis of the city, paved in marble and running downhill between the Hercules Gate and the library, lined with shopfronts, fountains, statue bases and a public latrine with its bench of seats intact.
Tip Walk downhill from the upper gate to the lower one. Buses drop at the top and collect at the bottom, so you never retrace.
Carved into Mount Pion and expanded by the Romans to hold about 24,000 people, with the paved Harbour Street running from its base towards the vanished port. The acoustics still work.
Tip Climb to the top row for the view down Harbour Street. It gives you the scale of the vanished city better than anything else.
In Selçuk, holding the finds from the site — including the two famous statues of Artemis of Ephesus, covered in what may be breasts, eggs or bull testicles, depending on which scholar you ask.
Tip Go after the site rather than before. The objects make far more sense once you have seen where they came from.
One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, four times the size of the Parthenon, of which a single reassembled column now stands in a marshy field with a stork's nest on top. The contrast is the point.
Tip Free, takes ten minutes, and is unexpectedly affecting precisely because there is nothing there.
A hillside village eight kilometres from Selçuk, built by Greek residents before the 1923 population exchange, with stone and timber houses, fruit wines sold from every doorway and views over olive groves.
Tip Very busy at midday with day-trippers. Go late afternoon or stay overnight, when it becomes lovely.
A ruined 6th-century basilica in Selçuk built over what is traditionally held to be the apostle John's tomb, and a small stone house on a hillside above Ephesus revered as the Virgin Mary's final home.
Tip The basilica's castle-hill setting is worth the walk. The Mary house is a place of pilgrimage rather than an archaeological site.
Things to do
Ephesus is a half-day site done well and a full day done badly. The rest of the time belongs to Selçuk and the villages.
Enter at the upper gate and walk down through Curetes Street to the library and the theatre, leaving by the lower gate. Three to four hours, starting at opening.
Tip Cruise passengers from Kuşadası arrive between about 10:00 and 14:00. Be there at 08:00 or after 16:00.
The separate ticket costs roughly as much again as the main site and gives you the interiors of six Roman apartments with mosaics, frescoes and plumbing. It is the best-preserved Roman domestic architecture outside Pompeii.
Tip Also the coolest part of the site, being under a roof — useful in summer heat.
The Ephesus Archaeological Museum in Selçuk holds everything portable that was found on the site, including the Artemis statues. Seeing it after the ruins rather than before makes both make sense.
Tip Small, well-organised and about an hour. Air-conditioned, which matters in July.
A Byzantine fortress on the hill above the town, with the Basilica of St John below it and views over the plain to where the sea once reached. Storks nest on the Roman aqueduct in the town centre.
Tip Selçuk's Saturday market is one of the best in the Aegean and fills several streets.
A Greek-built hillside village of stone houses, olive groves and fruit wine, eight kilometres from Selçuk. Overwhelmed by day-trippers at midday and lovely at 17:00.
Tip The fruit wines are sweet and mostly a novelty. The village and the views are the real reason to go.
Aphrodisias, two hours east, is arguably better preserved than Ephesus and receives a fraction of the visitors, with a stadium seating 30,000 almost intact. Priene and Miletus are closer.
Tip Aphrodisias works as a stop on the drive between Ephesus and Pamukkale.
Local food
This is the Aegean, which means olive oil, herbs, vegetables and seafood — the lightest regional cooking in Turkey and the closest to Greek.
Vegetables cooked in olive oil and served cold — green beans, artichokes, stuffed vine leaves, broad beans. The defining Aegean style and quite different from the meat-heavy cooking inland.
Where to try it Any traditional restaurant in Selçuk or along the Aegean coast, usually displayed in a counter to choose from.
Small cubes of marinated lamb grilled on wooden skewers, a speciality of the villages around Selçuk, served with flatbread, onion and grilled peppers.
Where to try it Grill restaurants in Selçuk and the surrounding villages. Ordered by the skewer.
Wild greens — şevketi bostan, radika, deniz börülcesi — gathered locally and served with olive oil and lemon. A distinctly Aegean habit and increasingly fashionable in Turkish cooking.
Where to try it Market stalls and traditional restaurants, seasonally from late winter into spring.
Sweet wines made from peach, melon, mulberry, pomegranate and blackberry, sold from every shopfront in Şirince. More a curiosity than a serious drink, and offered freely for tasting.
Where to try it Şirince village, where it is close to unavoidable. Buy small bottles.
Hand-rolled flatbread folded around cheese, spinach or potato and cooked on a domed griddle, sold at village stops and market stalls throughout the region.
Where to try it Selçuk's Saturday market and the roadside cafés between Selçuk and Şirince.
The Aegean produces most of Turkey's figs and a large share of its olive oil, and both are excellent, cheap and easy to take home from the markets.
Where to try it Selçuk's Saturday market. Dried figs from Aydın province are the ones to look for.
Accommodation
Selçuk is the sensible base — small, cheap, walkable and three kilometres from the site. Kuşadası is the cruise port and İzmir the nearest city, but neither is better.
Transport
İzmir's airport is an hour away and Selçuk is on the regional railway, which makes this one of the easier archaeological sites in the Mediterranean to reach.
Selçuk is small and walkable, and everything else is a short minibus ride or a taxi.
When to go
This is the Aegean coast, where summer is hot and the archaeological site has essentially no shade. The shoulder seasons are dramatically more comfortable and less crowded.
The best season: 18–26°C, green countryside, wildflowers among the ruins, and comfortable conditions for three or four hours on an unshaded site. Storks return to the aqueduct in Selçuk.
Regularly 33–38°C with no shade on the site and marble that reflects the heat. Visiting is still possible at opening or after 16:00, but the middle of the day is unwise. Cruise crowds peak.
The heat breaks through September and October is excellent — warm, clear, quiet, with the fig and olive harvest under way. Arguably the single best month here.
Mild at 10–17°C with some rain, and the site nearly empty. Selçuk is quiet, several pensions close, and walking the ruins in soft winter light with nobody around is a genuine pleasure.
Worth planning around: Cruise ship days. Kuşadası is a major Mediterranean cruise port and thousands of passengers arrive at Ephesus between roughly 10:00 and 14:00. Being on site at 08:00 or after 16:00 avoids nearly all of it.
Itinerary
The site early on the first morning, everything else afterwards. Assumes a Selçuk base and no car.
On site at opening, off it before the cruise crowds.
The town, a vanished Wonder, and a hill village.
Travel tips
Three of these make a real difference to how much you enjoy the site.
FAQ
Three to four hours for the site itself, including the Terrace Houses. Add the archaeological museum in Selçuk afterwards and that is a full day. A second day covers the Temple of Artemis, the Basilica of St John, Şirince and possibly another classical site — which is why two nights in Selçuk works better than a day trip.
Yes, comfortably. They cost roughly as much again as the main site entry and give you six Roman apartments with mosaic floors, wall frescoes, marble panelling and plumbing — the best-preserved Roman domestic interiors outside Pompeii. They are also under a roof, which makes them the coolest part of the site in summer. Most visitors skip them.
April to May and September to October, and within the day, at opening or after 16:00. The site has essentially no shade and summer temperatures reach 33–38°C on reflective marble. Kuşadası's cruise passengers arrive between roughly 10:00 and 14:00, so the early and late windows avoid both the heat and most of the crowds.
Selçuk, three kilometres from the site — a small town with family-run pensions, a Byzantine castle, the archaeological museum, the Temple of Artemis and frequent minibuses to the ruins for under a euro. It is far cheaper and considerably more pleasant than Kuşadası, the nearby cruise resort.
It is possible with a 06:00 flight to İzmir and a late return, and it makes for a long and rushed day arriving in the hottest, busiest window. Two nights in Selçuk costs very little and lets you see the site at opening, add the museum, the Temple of Artemis and Şirince, and eat properly. It is a much better trip.
One reassembled column standing in a marshy field, with a stork's nest on top. The temple was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and four times the size of the Parthenon. It takes ten minutes to visit, it is free, and the near-total absence of it is oddly more affecting than a ruin would be.
It helps a great deal. The site has very little interpretive signage, and much of what you are looking at — the function of a building, what the reliefs mean, why the harbour vanished — is not self-evident. Guides can be hired at the gate by the hour; two hours is usually enough. Agree the price and duration before starting.
Keep exploring
Places that pair well with Ephesus, whether you have a few spare days or are building a longer route.
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Turkey's most stylish stretch of Aegean coast, built on the site of Halicarnassus, with a Bronze Age shipwreck in the castle and thirteen villages on the peninsula behind it.
Don't miss The Castle of St Peter, built by the Knights of St John out of the stones of one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
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Don't miss Hagia Sophia — a cathedral for 916 years, a mosque for 481, a museum for 86, and a mosque again since 2020.
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A UNESCO-listed historic centre of Greek street plans and Baroque churches, the museum holding everything dug out of Pompeii, and the birthplace of pizza.
Don't miss Pompeii — 66 hectares of a Roman town stopped mid-morning in AD 79, with the volcano that did it still on the skyline.
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