Selçuk · İzmir · Türkiye
Ephesus, end to end
A Roman provincial capital laid out along one marble street, running downhill to a harbour that silted up and left. Two hours to walk it. Three to understand it. Here is how to spend them.
Closed — opens at 08:30.00:13 in SelçukToday’s hours
A Greek city that became the Roman capital of the province of Asia: a port of perhaps fifty thousand people, with a temple that made the list of the Seven Wonders and a theatre that held twenty-five thousand. Then its harbour silted up, the sea walked five kilometres west, and everyone left. What stands today is a mile of that city, dug out since 1895 and still being dug.
Three thousand years, on one pageFive things that decide how the day goes
What does it cost, and can you pay in euros?
€40 for the site, €15 more for the Terrace Houses. The price is set in euros but the ticket office will not take euro notes — cards, or Turkish lira.
Read02Upper gate or lower gate?
From the top the whole walk is downhill. From the bottom you climb it. The catch is that the two ticket offices stop selling an hour apart.
Read03How long do you actually need?
Ninety minutes gets you through. Three hours lets you sit down in the theatre, read a wall, and see the Terrace Houses without watching the clock.
Read04Are the Terrace Houses worth the extra ticket?
Roofed, shaded, and the only place at Ephesus where you stand in rooms people actually lived in, with the paint still on the walls. Also the first thing to close.
Read05Do you need a guide?
Not to find your way — the route is one street. To know what you are standing in, that is a different question, and worth answering before you buy a ticket.
ReadOne street, ninety metres downhill
Ephesus is not a museum you wander around. It is a city you walk through, from the civic quarter on the ridge to the road that once ran to the harbour. This is the order you meet it in, starting at the Upper Gate.
The Odeon and the upper city
A roofed council chamber for 1,500, and the civic quarter nobody stops in.
Curetes Street
Four hundred metres downhill, with the whole city arranged along it.
Temple of Hadrian
Four columns and an arch — and almost everything on it is a copy.
The Terrace Houses
Seven apartments with the paint still on the walls. Separate ticket, and worth it.
Library of Celsus
A tomb with a library on top, and a façade built to look bigger than it is.
Marble Street and the Agora
The processional road, the marketplace, and a footprint carved in the pavement.
The Great Theatre
Twenty-five thousand seats, and the best view of the harbour that isn't there.
Harbour Street
A lit avenue to a harbour that silted up and left.
The Church of Mary
Where the Council of Ephesus met in 431, and almost nobody stops.
Ephesus is closer than most people plan for
The site sits between Selçuk and the coast. From the cruise berth at Kuşadası it is a half-hour drive; from the centre of Selçuk you could walk it, and some people do.
Kuşadası cruise port
Ships berth in the town itself. The drive is short; the taxi queue at 08:30 is not.
25min by roadSelçuk
A dolmuş every half hour to the Lower Gate, or a flat 3 km walk past the Artemision.
10min by roadİzmir
The suburban train runs to Selçuk from Basmane, then a dolmuş. Slow, and cheaper than everything.
90min by rail
Why any of it is there
You can walk Ephesus in two hours knowing nothing and still enjoy it. These are for the other kind of visitor.
Why Ephesus was abandoned
Not war, and not really an earthquake. A river carrying mud, over eight hundred years, at a rate nobody could dig out.
The Terrace Houses
Seven apartments with the paint still on the walls. Separate ticket, and worth it.
Artemis of Ephesus, and the wonder that is now one column
One of the Seven Wonders. Now one column in a wet field.
The Great Theatre
Twenty-five thousand seats, and the best view of the harbour that isn't there.
A guide is not for finding your way
The signage at Ephesus is decent and the route is obvious. What a licensed guide changes is the other thing — knowing that the marks scratched into the Marble Street are a board game, that the Terrace Houses were still lived in when the harbour was already failing, that the theatre held twenty-four thousand people and you can hear a coin drop from the top row.
This guide is written by the team at Caicos Travel, who take visitors through the site most days of the week. If that is what you want, they run private walks and shore excursions from Kuşadası, and you deal with the same people from the first email to the last day.
Guided or on your own?Or go straight to their Ephesus excursion from the cruise port and the private full-day walk. Nothing is sold on this site; those links leave for caicostravel.com.tr.