Three days in Ephesus: a port city the sea walked away from

Two nights in Selçuk, the ruins from the top gate downhill at opening time, and the pieces of the city that ended up in the town museum.

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Length
3 days, 2 nights
Where you stay
Selçuk
Places
7 across 3 days
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Ephesus was a port, and then it was not. The river silted the harbour up faster than anyone could dredge it, the sea retreated west, and a city of perhaps a quarter of a million people slowly stopped making sense; today the coast is 15 km away at Kuşadası and the ruins sit in a dry valley among fig trees. That is why so much survives. Nobody built a modern city on top of it.

The base is Selçuk, an ordinary Aegean market town four kilometres up the road with a Roman aqueduct running through the middle of it and storks nesting on the arches. It has the museum, the last column of the Temple of Artemis, a Byzantine citadel and enough restaurants, and it is a five minute dolmuş ride from the gates of the ruins.

Two nights is the right length. Ephesus itself is a half day if you walk it properly, the museum needs an hour or two to make sense of what you have just seen, and everything else here is a short ride into the hills.

Highlights

  • A two storey library facade standing again at the bottom of the marble street, rebuilt from the rubble it collapsed into
  • A theatre for some 25,000 spectators carved out of the slope above the old harbour road
  • One re-erected column standing in a field, all that is left of a temple that was a wonder of the ancient world
  • The Artemis statues in the Selçuk museum, covered in what are either breasts, eggs or bulls' testicles depending on who you ask
  • Şirince up in the hills, a Greek village emptied in 1923 and now living off fruit wine and its own good looks

Where to stay

Selçuk, two nights

There has been a town on this spot for a very long time: a mound two kilometres south shows settlement from around 7000 BC, and the hill in the middle of Selçuk was the original Ephesus before the city moved down to the harbour. When the harbour failed, life came back up the hill again.

The Selçuk Turks gave the town its modern name in the 10th century, the Ottomans took over in the 14th, and industry never arrived, which is the main reason the antiquities are still standing. It is a working town of about thirty six thousand people rather than a resort, and it is the better base for that.

Except for the chapel up in the pines, everything below is reachable on foot or by a dolmuş that costs less than a coffee.

Day by day

Day 1 in Selçuk

The museum, the last column and the mosque below the citadel

Arrive, walk into the middle of Selçuk, and spend the afternoon on the things that are five minutes from your room. Doing the museum before the ruins rather than after is the better order: it holds most of what was carried out of Ephesus, so the site makes more sense the next morning.

From the museum it is a short walk to a marshy field with one column in it, which takes some believing given what used to stand there, and then on to a 14th century mosque at the foot of the citadel hill.

Eat in town. Selçuk is small enough that the good places are obvious by eight o'clock.

  1. 15:00

    Ephesus Archaeological Museum

    Historic

    Small, well laid out and full of the best pieces from the site up the road: statues, glass, coins, sarcophagi and the two famous Artemis figures, the goddess covered from chest to waist in rows of objects that scholars have variously called breasts, eggs and bull testicles. The Anatolian mother goddess ran from Kybele to this, and the room makes the continuity clear.

  2. 17:00

    Temple of Artemis

    Religious

    The Temple of Artemis was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world and a great deal larger than the Parthenon, burned down and rebuilt more than once and finally quarried away for other buildings. What is left is a single column re-erected from broken drums, standing in a wet field with a stork's nest on top of it and geese in the water. It is free, it takes ten minutes, and it is oddly moving.

  3. 18:00

    İsa Bey Mosque

    Religious

    Built in 1374 for the ruler of the principality of Aydın and modelled on the Great Mosque of Damascus, with columns lifted from the ruins of Ephesus holding up the roof. It fell apart in the 19th century and was rebuilt in the 1970s, and the courtyard is a good cool place to sit at the end of an afternoon.

With more time: The aqueduct arches running through the town centre carried water to Ephesus and are now a stork colony. Between spring and late summer there are nests on most of the pillars, and the birds are entirely unbothered by the traffic underneath them.

Day 2 in Selçuk

Ephesus from the upper gate, then the hill above it

Be at the upper gate when it opens. The site runs downhill from there along the old main streets, and walking it in that direction means an easy descent, the best buildings saved for last, and an hour or two before the coach groups from the coast arrive.

Give it three or four hours and pay for the Terrace Houses on the way down. Then take a taxi from the lower gate up to the chapel on the hillside above the ruins, which is quiet, shaded and a complete change of tone.

You will be back in Selçuk by late afternoon with your legs gone. That is what the roof terrace is for.

  1. 08:30

    Ephesus

    Historic

    The best preserved classical city in the eastern Mediterranean, and big enough that the walk from gate to gate is most of an hour without stopping. The set pieces are the marble main street, the two storey facade of the Library of Celsus (built as a tomb for a Roman governor and re-erected from its own fallen stones in the 1970s), the theatre cut into the hillside for around 25,000 spectators, and the Terrace Houses, where mosaic floors and painted rooms survive under a modern roof. Paul spent two years preaching here, and the riot the silversmiths raised against him took place in that theatre.

  2. 13:00

    Lunch at the lower gate

    Eat

    There are a few cafes by the car park, and they are fine rather than good; the alternative is to go back into Selçuk and eat properly, which costs you half an hour of driving.

  3. 14:30

    House of the Virgin Mary

    Religious

    A small stone chapel in the pines above the ruins, identified in the 19th century from the visions of a German nun who had never been to Turkey, and a pilgrimage site ever since, visited by several popes. Whether or not Mary ever lived here (the older tradition puts her in Jerusalem), the place is calm, cool and shaded, with a wall of tied prayer ribbons and a spring below it.

With more time: The paved avenue running west from the theatre once ended at the docks. The flat ground beyond it is the silted harbour, and walking the last stretch of that street is the clearest explanation you will get of why a city this size stopped existing.

Day 3 in Selçuk

The basilica on the citadel hill, and Şirince before the train

Start on the citadel hill above the town, where the church built over the tomb of St John still shows its plan clearly enough to walk it, and the view takes in the whole valley: the fortress walls, the mosque below, the single column of the temple and, in the distance, the hills above Ephesus.

Then take the dolmuş up to Şirince for the rest of the morning. It is eight kilometres of hairpins into hills covered in olives and vines, and the village at the top was Greek until 1923.

Trains and buses back out run through the afternoon, so a late flight from Izmir is comfortable from here.

  1. 09:00

    Byzantine Citadel and St John Basilica

    Historic

    Justinian finished the basilica in 565 AD over what was held to be the grave of St John the Apostle, on the hill that had been the first Ephesus. Enough of the columns and the marble floor have been re-erected to read the shape of what was one of the largest churches of its day. The fortifications above it went up in the 7th century against Arab raids and stayed in use until Tamerlane's Mongols wrecked the whole site in 1402.

  2. 11:00

    Şirince

    Other

    A hill village of stone and plaster houses that emptied in the population exchange of 1923, when its Greek inhabitants left for Greece and Turkish families arrived from northern Greece. It survives now on day trippers, fruit wine and a very photogenic main street, and it is at its best before eleven in the morning or after the buses leave.

  3. 15:00

    Train or bus onwards

    Travel

    Regional trains run north to Izmir and the airport and east towards Denizli for Pamukkale; the bus station in Selçuk covers everything else. Buy the airport train ticket before you get on, and allow a good two hours for the trip.

With more time: With a spare afternoon instead of a departure, the beach at Pamucak is seven kilometres west, a long grey-sand strip where the Aegean has retreated to. There is almost nothing there but a couple of cafes and the wind, which is rather the point.

Before you go

Getting there

Izmir Adnan Menderes is the airport, 55 km north, with daily flights from Istanbul and a scattering of European services. The useful thing is that both the airport and Selçuk are on the railway, so you never have to go into central Izmir and out again: take the IZBAN suburban line south, change at Tepeköy for the Selçuk extension, or catch one of the regional trains that run from Izmir Basmane through the airport to Selçuk in about ninety minutes.

The same regional line continues east to Denizli, which is the way to Pamukkale, roughly three hours further on. Kuşadası, half an hour west, is where the cruise ships dock, which is worth knowing because it determines how busy Ephesus is on any given morning.

Getting around

Dolmuş minibuses run constantly between Selçuk and Kuşadası and pass the lower gate of Ephesus; ask for Efes and the driver will stop. Taxis from the town to either gate are cheap and are the only sensible way to reach the House of the Virgin Mary, which is at the top of a wooded hill with no public transport at all.

In Selçuk itself everything is walkable. The museum, the mosque, the citadel and the temple field are within ten minutes of each other.

Tickets and timing

Ephesus has two gates, an upper one and a lower one, roughly a kilometre and a half apart along the main street of the ancient city. Start at the upper gate and walk down: it is all gentle descent and it puts the Library of Celsus and the theatre at the end rather than the beginning.

The Terrace Houses are a separate ticket inside the site, and they are the best thing in it if you have any interest in how people actually lived: mosaic floors, painted walls and plumbing, under a modern roof, which also makes them the coolest place on a hot day.

Go at opening or after three. There is almost no shade in the site, and the cruise groups from Kuşadası arrive in a block in the middle of the morning.

Eating and staying

Selçuk is full of small family-run pensions with roof terraces, and it is worth choosing one for the breakfast rather than the room. The Saturday market fills several streets and is one of the better ones in the region.

The local speciality is çöp şiş, small skewers of lamb grilled over charcoal and served with flat bread and grilled peppers. Şirince, up the hill, does fruit wines that range from decent to alarming and are sold by the tasting glass in every second shop.

Ephesus rewards an early start more than almost any site in Turkey. The same street is a quiet marble avenue at eight and a slow-moving crowd at eleven, and nothing else you do that day matters as much as which of the two you choose.

Beyond that, Selçuk is an easy place to spend two nights: storks on the aqueduct, a good market, and hills full of olives twenty minutes above the town.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Should I stay in Selçuk or Kuşadası?
Selçuk, unless you specifically want a beach. It is four kilometres from the ruins instead of twenty, it has the museum and the Temple of Artemis inside the town, and it is a real place rather than a resort strip. Kuşadası makes sense if you are arriving by cruise ship or travelling with people who want to swim.
How long do you need at Ephesus itself?
Three to four hours for the site including the Terrace Houses, walking downhill from the upper gate. Doubling back uphill afterwards is the thing to avoid, so either arrange a taxi to meet you at the lower gate or catch a dolmuş on the main road.
Is there any shade at the ruins?
Very little. The marble reflects heat, the site is open, and in July and August the middle of the day is genuinely unpleasant. Go at opening, carry water, and use the Terrace Houses, which are roofed, as your break.
Can I do Ephesus as a day trip from Izmir?
You can, on the regional train, and plenty of people do. Staying two nights in Selçuk gets you the site at opening rather than mid morning, the museum without rushing, and the hill villages, which is a different trip from a long day out.
What is left of the Temple of Artemis?
One column, re-assembled from fragments, in a field beside the road. The stone was carried off for other buildings over the centuries, and much of what survived is in the Selçuk museum or in London. Go anyway; it takes ten minutes and the scale of the foundations is still visible.