Are the Terrace Houses at Ephesus worth the extra ticket?

This is the question people actually ask at the gate, usually while a group is being sold tickets in front of them and the answer has to be immediate. So: yes, if you have the time, and here is why.

What the €15 buys

Everything else at Ephesus is outdoors and public. The Terrace Houses are indoors and private: a block of seven wealthy apartments built into the slope, sealed by an earthquake, dug out over decades and roofed.

Inside, in place and not reconstructed:

• painted walls, whole schemes of them, with figures and framing still legible
• mosaic floors, including a Nereid and a Triton that would be in a museum anywhere else
• a marble-faced reception hall two storeys high
• domestic plumbing, latrines and under-floor heating

There is nothing else like it at Ephesus, and very little like it anywhere in the Roman world that you can walk through.

And the other thing it buys

Shade. The route runs under a roof, out of the sun, with air moving through it. In July and August that is worth something on its own.

The case against

Time. Forty-five minutes, and it is not compressible — the walkway is one-way and you cannot easily turn back. If you have ninety minutes at Ephesus in total, spend them outside.

Stairs. A lot of them, on steel walkways, with no lift and no alternative route. If stairs are difficult, this is not for you.

Crowds at the door. The entrance queues when a group arrives. Inside it spreads out.

It is a second decision, not a discount. The Museum Pass does not cover it.

The honest test

Ask yourself whether you want to see how people lived, or how a city was built. Ephesus outside is architecture: streets, façades, civic scale. The Terrace Houses are domestic: someone's dining room, someone's choice of pattern for a corridor floor.

If the second of those is more interesting to you than another colonnade, pay the fifteen euros.

Do not leave it late

The Terrace Houses ticket office closes at 18:00 in summer, two hours before the site does. Coming up from the Lower Gate late in the afternoon is the standard way to arrive at a shut door.