Two hours at Ephesus

Start at the Upper Gate and arrange to be collected at the bottom. Everything below assumes that.

0:00 — In at the Upper Gate

Buy the ticket, ignore the stalls, and keep walking. The first two hundred metres are the dullest part of the site and there is no reason to spend time on them.

0:08 — The Odeon

Ten minutes. Walk up four or five rows and sit down. This is the coolest, quietest moment of the visit and it is worth taking properly, because nothing else on the walk is quiet.

Glance at the State Agora opposite. Do not walk the length of it.

0:20 — The head of Curetes Street

Where the paving changes and the ground drops. Stop here for two minutes and look down the hill: you can see most of the route from this point, and it will make sense of everything that follows.

0:25 — Down Curetes Street

Twenty-five minutes for four hundred metres, which sounds slow and is not. Stops worth making:

• the Trajan Fountain, with the enormous foot
• the Temple of Hadrian, five minutes, and stand in the middle of the street
• the latrines, behind the baths, which will be busy and are worth it anyway

Watch your footing. The marble is polished and the slope is real.

0:50 — The Library of Celsus

Twenty minutes. Walk into the middle of the square, turn round, and look at it from a distance before going close. Then go and see the entrance to the burial vault at the foot of the façade, and the triple arch of the Mazeus and Mithridates Gate beside it.

Going into the Terrace Houses? You passed the entrance five minutes ago, and at two hours you do not have the time. Read the argument and decide before you set off, not here.

1:15 — Marble Street

Ten minutes walking, with two things to look for: the carved footprint in the paving, and the game boards cut into the colonnade platform on the right.

1:30 — The Great Theatre

Twenty minutes, and use them to climb. Get up into the middle tier — far enough that you are looking down — and then turn round and look west along Harbour Street to the plain that used to be the sea.

1:50 — Harbour Street to the Lower Gate

Ten minutes, straight out. If the Experience Museum has a session starting and you are ahead of yourself, it is twenty minutes and already in your ticket.

If you only have ninety minutes

Cut the Odeon to five minutes, Curetes Street to fifteen, and do not climb the theatre. You will still have seen it.

If you are going uphill instead

Reverse the list. Add ten minutes, because you are climbing, and expect to be tired at the top rather than the bottom.