The fabled city of Ephesus is a couple of hours travelling from Bodrum. We set out in the early morning for the day, guided by Zafer - the manager, and driven in the Hotel minibus by Erkan - the hotels own driver. Suitably stock piled with drinks and enough rations we were ready for adventure. Local beers, nuts and fruit for the journey in an icebox - nutritious food indeed.
Ephesus is actually a collection of sites as much as an individual city. It is rightly renowned as an ancient city but is much more than that. It is a place that with a little imagination can make you transcend time and suddenly you are 2,000 years away from our present time???.. The real beauty of seeing the ancient sites is not the bricks and mortar but the connection with an early civilisation.
There is really little in Europe that compares. In the majority of Europe there are plenty of cities that are as old, but they are still there, and you see the odd fragment of what was once the mighty civilisation of Rome. In the main they have been reconstructed on the same site, the ancient buildings used for more modern edifices. It is the fact that Ephesus was abandoned for nearly 1,500 years and excavated only this century that makes the connection feel so real. The ruins are not sterile - they create a sense of awe and wonder. Who were these people, where did they come from, why would you want to abandon such a magnificent city? The guides can answer these questions, but somehow the answers are not completely convincing. Let your imagination be the arbiter of the way you judge the sites.
Ephesus was abandoned apparently by a combination of a silted up harbour, infestation by mosquitoes, earthquakes and administrative chaos. The Romans recorded the life and times of Ephesus - so we know a little.
To list the individual sites is tedious, and none of us have a memory for the names of individual buildings - better to start your tour and imagine that you were a Roman citizen of 1800 years ago - an ancient tourist. Not much has changed - just the fact that most of the buildings are dishevelled. You can still see the grandeur and magnificence of the carvings, stones and streets to understand where you were.
Stone carved into images that almost live and breath, Marble of the finest quality under your feet.
Most likely you would have arrived in the Harbour, perhaps from Rome itself. This would have been full of all the races of the ancients. Ephesus was the start of the Silk Road to China, so in the main there would have been merchants, trading and haggling. The business done for the day you would have gone to the Great Theatre for a performance. It is still popular today. Elton John played the first live concert that people paid to watch on the web from here.
There is every sign of life. The area around the Library is the most interesting. This was probably the centre of the town and the Market Square. Our Roman citizen would have no doubt gone to the Library, stopped by the latrines (complete with running water) and maybe visited the Brothel on the way home. All tastes were probably indulged in the ancient city. Today it is more likely that you will watch the bare bottomed tourists taking rude photographs for their albums!
The biblical connections are fascinating. St. Paul was a well-known figure in the town, preaching early Christianity. One of the chapters of the Bible - Ephesians was directed at the citizens, who at the time worshipped Artemis. In those cruel and ruthless times converting the wealthy Ephesians to Christianity must have been hard work. It is for instance; known that St.Paul particularly annoyed the silversmiths who produced Artemis paraphernalia, because they thought that there would be no market for their produce. You could see the same reaction today! St. Paul went on through a combination of tenacity and saintliness achieved extraordinary evangelical conversions. The early Christian Church was not born here but it had its adolescence.
St. John figured prominently in Ephesus. He is believed to have died in Ephesus in his late 90's, and indeed in the 4th century the second largest church in the World at that time was built at the site of his tomb. Presumably they demolished one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World - the Temple of Artemis to build it.
A short trip to Seljuk a few miles distant is worth seeing the site of St. John's Basilica. It is quite stunning that this major site for pilgrimage in the middle Ages is now rarely visited. The scale, size and setting are miraculous, even without the connection to St. John.
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Mavi Yolculuk 
