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EPHESOS was one of the great cities of antiquity, with a population in its heyday of perhaps 250,000. Its immense wealth depended on its port and trade both with the Aegean world and with the hinterland, on its agricultural territory, and on pilgrimage to its famous cult of Artemis, a fusion of the Greek goddess of hunting and a pre-Greek fertility goddess. Ephesos became the capital of the Roman province of Asia, but by the sixth century AD its fortunes were in decline as the silt brought down by the River Kaistros blocked its harbours. Today it lies several kilometres from the sea.

The site, excavated by the Austrians for the past century, is now one of Turkey’s show-case tourist centres. We start with a visit to the museum at Selçuk, the modern town a few kilometres to the north, which displays the most spectacular fi nds from the site, including the marble statues of Artemis/Diana adorned with many breasts (or fruit, or eggs, or bulls’ testicles, or honey-combs; theories abound), a compellingly repulsive colossal head of the emperor Titus (not Domitian, pace most guidebooks and the museum’s caption), a wealth of other statuary, and some exquisite ivory furniture inlay. Some may prefer to visit the great basilica of St. John the Divine built in the sixth century by the emperor Justinian just up the road, but the interior is closed to visitors for restoration, and if you have not been to the museum before, we advise you not to miss it.

We then drive down to the site of the great temple of Artemis/Diana, discovered and excavated by British archaeologists in the nineteenth century. Only a single column (and that restored) is standing, but there survives the massive foundation platform of the archaic temple (115m x 55m), built with aid from King Croesus of Lydia and destroyed by fire in 356 BC, and the additional platform of the temple which succeeded it and survived into Roman times.

The heat of the day and the swarm of visitors should be declining as we drive from the great temple, close along the route of the old sacred way, to the Magnesian Gate, the upper entrance to the city. Our route through the site will thus be the reverse of that described in most guidebooks. It takes us gently downhill along the Sacred Way and street of the Curetes (priests of Artemis), then at right angles along the so-called marble street to the great theatre, then, if there is time, along the street of Arcadius towards the ancient harbour. Our bus awaits us at the lower entrance.

The heart of the Graeco-Roman city lies in the shallow valley between Bülbül Dağı (Nightingale Mountain, ancient Mount Koressos) on our left and Panayır Dağı (Panagia = Holy Mary Mountain, ancient Mount Pion) on our right. Apart from some impressive city-walls built on Koressos in about 300 BC by Lysimachos, one of Alexander the Great’s successors, most of the visible remains are from the Roman period. Among other buildings, we visit the odeion, the prytaneion, the temple dediecated to the Flavian emperors, the monument of Memmius, the fountain of Trajan, the temple of Hadrian, the baths of Scholasticia, the public latrines, the beautifully restored library of Celsus, the commercial agora and the great theatre where the mob rioted against St. Paul. We also visit the Terrace Houses, a complex of opulent private houses near the Library of Celsus, which have some magnifi cent frescoes and mosaics; many of the richer artefacts in the museum came from here. The houses date from around the fi rst century AD,  and appear to have been abandoned in the later third century, perhaps after an earthquake.

WESTMINSTER CLASSIC TOURS