Ephesus Turkey Hotel About

Ephesus Turkey, Ephesus Tour and Hotel

About Ephesus
Ephesus is the best-preserved classical city on the eastern Mediterranean, and among the best places in the world to get a feel for what life was like in Roman times. Needless to say, it's a major tourist destination.

Ancient Ephesus was a great trading and religious city, a centre for the cult of Cybele, the Anatolian fertility goddess. Under the influence of the Ionians, Cybele became Artemis, the virgin goddess of the hunt and the moon, and a fabulous temple was built in her honour. When the Romans took over and made this the province of Asia, Artemis became Diana and Ephesus became the Roman provincial capital. Its Temple of Diana was counted among the Seven Wonders of the World.

As a large and busy Roman town with ships and caravans coming from all over, it quickly acquired a sizeable Christian congregation. St Paul visited Ephesus and later wrote the most profound of his epistles to the Ephesians.

Ephesus was renovvned for its wealth and beauty even before it was pillaged by Gothic invaders in 262 AD, and it was stili an important enough place in 431 AD for a church council to be held there. Much of the city remains for you to see.

in high summer it gets very hot here. it's best to start your tramping early in the morning, then retire to a shady restaurant for lunch at the peak of the heat. Unfortunately this is what the coach parties also do; lunch time is when you're most likely to avoid the bedlam of tour groups.

If your interest in ancient ruins is slight, half a day may suffice, but real ruins buffs will want to continue their explorations in the afternoon. Take a water bottle as drinks at the site are more expensive.

it's 3km from the Tourism Information Office in Selçuk to the admission gate at Ephesus, a pleasant 30 to 45-minute walk along a shady İane at the side of the highway. The lane, actually the old road, is named after Doktor Sabri Yayla, who had the foresight to plant the trees earlier in the century.

History in Ephesus, Ephesus Photo, Ephesus Visit
Earliest Times

According to a legend related by Athenaeus, Androclus, son of King Codrus of Athens, consulted an oracle about where he should found a settlement in Ionia. The oracle answered, in typically cryptic style, 'choose the site indicated by the fish and the boar.

Androclus sat down with some fıshermen near the mouth of the Cayster River and Panayır Dağı (Mt Pion), the hill into which Ephesus Great Theatre was later built. As they grilled some fısh for lunch, one of the fısh leapt out of the brazier, taking with it a hot coal which ignited some shavings, which in turn ignited the nearby brush. A wild boar hiding in the brush ran in alarm from the fire; the spot at which it was killed by the fıshermen became the site of Ephesus' temple of Athena.

For many years thereafter the wild boar was a symbol of the city. Until the 1970s it was stili common to see wild pigs in scrub thickets near Ephesus

in ancient times the sea came much further inland, almost as far as present-day Selçuk, even lapping at the feet of Panayır Dağı. The fırst settlement, of which virtually nothing remains, was built on the hill's northern slope, and was a prosperous city by about 600 BC. The nearby sanctuary of Cybele/Artemis (Anatolian mother goddess) had been a place of pilgrimage since at least 800 BC and may - let's face it - have had more to do with the selection of the site than the fish and the pig.