Ephesus (/ˈɛfəsəs/;Greek: Ἔφεσος Ephesos; Turkish: Efes; ultimately from Hittite Apasa) was an ancient Greek city on the coast of Ionia, three kilometres southwest of present-day Selçuk in İzmir Province, Turkey.

It was built in the 10th century BC on the site of the former Arzawan capital by Attic and Ionian Greek colonists.

During the Classical Greek era it was one of the twelve cities of the Ionian League. The city flourished after it came under the control of the Roman Republic in 129 BC. According to estimates, Ephesus had a population of 33,600 to 56,000 people in the Roman period, making it the third largest city of Roman Asia Minor after Sardis and Alexandria Troas.

The city was famed for the Temple of Artemis (completed around 550 BC), one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

In 268 AD, the Temple was destroyed or damaged in a raid by the Goths. It may have been rebuilt or repaired but this is uncertain, as its later history is not clear. Emperor Constantine the Great rebuilt much of the city and erected new public baths. Following the Edict of Thessalonica from Emperor Theodosius I, what remained of the temple was destroyed in 401 AD by a mob led by St. John Chrysostom.

The town was partially destroyed by an earthquake in 614 AD. The city's importance as a commercial center declined as the harbor was slowly silted up by the Küçükmenderes River.

Ephesus was one of the seven churches of Asia that are cited in the Book of Revelation. The Gospel of John may have been written here. The city was the site of several 5th century Christian Councils (see Council of Ephesus). It is also the site of a large gladiators' graveyard.

The ruins of Ephesus are a favourite international and local tourist attraction, partly owing to their easy access from Adnan Menderes Airport.

History of Ephesus

According to the old legends, Ephesus was founded by the female warriors known as the Amazons. The name of the city is thought to have been derived from "APASAS", the name of a city in the "KINGDOM OF ARZAWA" meaning the "city of the Mother Goddess".
​
Ephesus was inhabited from the end of the Bronze Age onwards, but changed its location several times in the course of its long history in accordance with habits and requirements.

​Carians and Lelegians are to be have been among the city's first inhabitants. Ionian migrations are said to have begun in around 1200 B.C. According to legend, the city was founded for the second time by Androclus, the son of Codrus, king of Athens, on the shore at the point where the CAYSTER (Küçük Menderes) empties into the sea, a location to which they had been guided by a fish and a wild boar on the advice of the soothsayers.

The Ionian cities that grew up in the wake of the Ionian migrations joined in a confederacy under the leadership of Ephesus. The region was devastated during the Cimmerian invasion at the beginning of the 7th century B.C. Under the rule of the Lydian kings, Ephesus became one of the wealthiest cities in the Mediterranean world. The defeat of the Lydian King Croesus by Cyrus, the King of Persia, prepared the way for the extension of Persian hegemony over the whole of the Aegean coastal region.

At the beginning of the 5th century, when the Ionian cities rebelled against Persia, Ephesus quickly dissociated itself from the others, thus escaping destruction.

Ephesus remained under Persian rule until the arrival of Alexander the Great in 334 B.C., when it entered upon a fifty year period of peace and tranquillity. Lysimachus, who had been one of the twelve generals of Alexander the Great and became ruler of the region on Alexander's death, decided to embark upon the development of the city, which he called Arsineia after his wife Arsinoe. He constructed a new harbour and built defence walls on the slopes of the Panayır and Bülbül Mts., moving the whole city 2.5 km to the south-west. Realising, however, that the Ephesians were unwilling to leave their old city, he had the whole sewage system blocked up during a great storm, making the houses uninhabitable and forcing the inhabitants to move. In 281 B.C. the city was re-founded under the old name of Ephesus and became one of the most important of the commercial ports in the Mediterranean.

In 129 B.C. the Romans took advantage of the terms of the will left by Attalos, King of Pergamon, by which they were bequathed his kingdom, to incorporate the whole region into the Roman Empire as the province of Asia. Ancient sources show that at this time the city had a population of 200,000. In the 1st century B.C. the heavy taxes imposed by the Roman government led the population to embrace Mithridates as their savior and to support him in his mutiny against Roman authority and in 88 B.C. a massacre was carried out of all the Latin speaking inhabitants of the city, which was then stormed and sacked by a Roman army under Sulla, It was from the reign of Augustus onwards that the buildings we admire today were constructed. According to documentary sources, the city suffered severe damage in an earthquake in 17 A.D. After that, however, Ephesus became a very important centre of trade and commerce. The historian Aristio describes Ephesus as being recognised by all the inhabitants of the region as the most important trading centre in Asia. It was also the leading political and intellectual centre, with the second school of philosophy in the Aegean. From the 1st century onwards, Ephesus was visited by Christian disciples attempting to spread the Christian belief in a single God and thus forced to seek refuge from Roman persecution. Besides enjoying a privileged position between East and West coupled with an exceptionally fine climate, the city owed its importance to its being the centre of the cult of Artemis.

For the Christians, the city, with its highly advanced way of life, its high standard of living, the variety of its demographic composition and its firmly rooted polytheistic culture, must have presented itself as an ideal pilot region... From written sources we learn that St Paul remained in the city for three years from 65 to 68, and that it was here that he preached his famous sermons calling upon the hearers to embrace the faith in. one God. He taught that God had no need of a house made with human hands and that he was present in all places at all times. This was all greatly resented by the craftsmen who had amassed great wealth from their production of statues of Artemis in gold, silver or other materials. A silversmith by the name of Demetrius stirred up the people and led a crowd of thousands of Ephesians to the theatre, where they booed and stoned Paul and his two colleagues, chanting "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians! Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!" So turbulent was the crowd that Paul and his companions escaped only with great difficulty. From his Epistles to the communities it would appear that Paul spent some time as a prisoner in Ephesus.

Legend has it that St John the Evangelist came to Ephesus with the Virgin Mary in his care. Some also say that it was here that he wrote his Gospel and was finally buried. In 269 Ephesus and the surrounding country was devastated by the Goths. At that time there was still a temple in which the cult of Artemis was practised. In 381, by order of the Emperor Theodosius, the temple was closed down, and in the following centuries it lay completely abandoned, serving as a quarry for building materials.

The situation of the city, which had given it its privileged geographical position, was also the cause of its decline and fall. The prosperity of the city had been based on its possession of a sheltered natural harbour, but by the Roman period ships reached the harbour to the west of Mt Pion 1.5 km from the Temple of Artemis through a very narrow and difficult channel. The cause of this was the Meander (Cayster) River, which emptied into the Aegean a little to the west of the city of Ephesus, where it created a delta formed by the alluvium carried down by the river over thousands of years. By the late Byzantine era the channel had been so silted up as to be no longer usable. The sea gradually receded farther and farther, while the marshy lands around the harbour gave rise to a number of diseases, such as malaria. The new outlook that had arisen with the spread of Christianity led to the gradual abandonment of all buildings bearing witness to the existence of polytheistic cults and the construction in their place of Christian churches. In the year 431 the third Ecumenical council took place in Ephesus.

Emperor Theodosius convoked another council in Ephesus in 449, which came to be known as the "robber council". From the 6th century onwards the Church of St John was an important place of pilgrimage, and Justinian took measures to protect it by having.the whole hill on which it stood surrounded by defence walls. Shortly afterwards, the Church of the Virgin and other places of worship were destroyed and pillaged in Arab raids. In the 7th century the city was transferred to the site now occupied by the town of Selçuk and during the Byzantine era Ephesus grew up around the summit of Mt Ayasuluğ. The city enjoyed its last years of prosperity under the Selçuk Emirate of the Aydınoğulları. During the Middle Ages the city ceased to function as a port.

By the 20th century the silt carried down by the Meander had extended the plain for a distance of 5 km.

The House of Virgin Mary

The temple of Artemision is known as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient world. It had been built in the vicinity of Ephesus on a flat area which has over the centuries turned into a swamp. Today one can only see the ruins of the foundations of this marvelous construction of the Hellenistic Age, entirely made of marble and full of sculptured columns, capitals and shafts. The most beautiful remains of this temple are today exhibited in the London British Museum.


The oldest remains found date back to the 6th century BC. The structure originally consisted of 36 huge columns, later enlarged upon from the orders of the Lydian King, Kreisos, during the 6th century BC. Most of the exhibits in the London British Museum belong to this period.


A new Artemision was rebuilt in the 2nd century BC. Located on top of the previous one, it had tremendous dimensions: 125 columns each 17,5 meters high. Unfortunately this one was also destroyed by fire, reconstructed and again demolished by earthquakes, rebuilt and at last looted by Goths one year later.


The statue of the many-breasted Artemision was the symbol of the temple but also of abundance, hunting and wild life. The genuine statue of Artemision, removed during the fire, is today exhibited in the Selcuk Museum. Many copies of this statue were found during the latest excavations and date back to the Roman period. 


Aphrodisias was changed to Stayropolis and then to Caria which became Geyre years after. The ruins which are worth seeing inAphrodisias are listed below:


When the Greeks first arrived under the leadership of Androklos, Kybele (Rhea) was the major deity in all of Anatolia. The Greeks introduced the worship of Artemis and later Artemis and Kybele eventually became the same goddess. Artemis is the goddess of hunting, wild animals, childbirth, and nature.


According to the famous historian Strabon, the Temple of Artemis was built and destroyed seven times. It was always rebuilt on the same site. Some of the different architects were Theodoros from Samos, Chersiphon and his son Metagenes from Knossos of Crete, and Dinocrates.

The temple foundations date back to the 7th century BC. At first, it was a small shrine to Kybele. In around 550 BC Cretan Chersiphon, a Greek architect, designed the final temple. This initial building was sponsored by the Lydian king Croesus.

The Church of St. John &  The Church of Mary  

                      The Double Church

The Church of Mary not only counts among the most significant of the historical monuments at Ephesus, it is also visited by thousands of tourists and pilgrims annually.

This church was the site of the Third Ecumenical Council, convened by Emperor Theodosius II at Ephesus in 431 A.D. 
The Council was held to resolve a theological debate between two schools of thought about the nature of Christ and of His mother, Mary. 

One school, led by Nestorius, the Bishop of Constantinople, advocated that Christ was born human and became God, and that His mother should be called merely “Christ-bearer” or Christotokos (Χριστοτόκος).  The more popular view, however, was that Jesus was the Son of God, was born God and, therefore, Mary was deserving of the honor of being called the Mother of God, (Θεοτόκος) or “Theotokos.” 

This view was led by  Cyrill, Bishop of Alexandria, which united two natures – human and divine – in Christ.  Approximately 250 bishops journeyed to Ephesus from all over and took part in a heated debate over the divine nature of Jesus at birth.  In the end, the Council concluded that Jesus was God, born God and Mary was rightly called “Mother of God.”  Nestorius was denounced and excommunicated from the Church for his heresy.  A torch-light parade exited the church proclaiming Mary as “Theotokos” and it is from this place that today Christians pray, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners.”
A lesser Council was held here in 449 A.D.  However, because of the controversial proceedings this second council was not accepted as ecumenical, and was labeled a “Robber Synod” and later repudiated at the Council of Chalcedon.  From the 5th Century on, the Church of Mary served without doubt as the seat of the Bishop of Ephesus. Baptismal ceremonies were held in the polygonal Baptistery where thousands of Pagans were converted. This building is without doubt one of the most important testimonials of Early Christianity.
The Church of St. Mary, named for the Blessed Virgin herself, was discovered early in the 20th century and is believed to be the very first church in the world named for Mary. A passage in the synodal letter of the first Council of Ephesus reads: “Wherefore also Nestorius, the renewer of the impious heresy, when he had come to the city of the Ephesians, where John the Theologian and the Virgin Mother of God, the Holy Mary . . . from the assembly of the Holy Fathers and Bishops.” Since St. John lived in Ephesus and was buried there (according to Eusebius), it has been inferred that the ellipsis of the synodal letter means either, “where John. . .and the Virgin. . . Mary lived,” or perhaps, “where John. . .and the Virgin. . . Mary lived and are buried.”  This passage gives witness to the oral tradition and belief held at that time that both St. John the Apostle and the Blessed Virgin Mary both lived and died at Ephesus.
The building received the canonical name of the “holiest church of the most holy, most honoured and eternal virgin Mary.” In later years, a complete alteration of the complex and a massive reconstruction was made necessary due to an earthquake which severely damaged the church. During this renovation, in the region in front of the apse, free-standing stone pilasters were erected instead of the columns; and the west part of the church was rebuilt as a vaulted dome church, with its own apse, using massive brick construction. The church was divided in two, with one part dedicated to St. John the Evangelist and the remainder to Mary, resulting in the name the “Double Church” by some.   The Church of St. Mary served as a cemetery church until at least the 11th century, and many graves can be found at the entry plaza.
​
Pope John XXIII (1958-1963) visited ancient Ephesus in 1931 on the 50th Centenary of the Council of Ephesus, held in 431 A.D. as the papal legate in Bulgaria.  During that visit, he toured the ruins of the Church of Mary, the site of the famous ecumenical council which declared Mary to be Theotokos, or “Mother of God.”

Sirince
This pretty old Orthodox village, 12 km away from Ephesus and 30 km from Kusadasi, was once Cirkince ("ugly"). Indeed its habitants gave this name on purpose as they did not want to be bothered by foreigners nor to share the beauty of their village.Still after years, visitors understood that the village was not ugly at all and called it Sirince ("pretty"). As the village is located on the top of a mountain, anyone will enjoy the impressive wine yards' and peach trees' views on his way. Today the village is a perfect synthesis of Turk-Greek culture as of the 1920's: after the Independence War, people exchange between Greek and Turks has occurred and all those typical Greek houses, though they kept their original outside characteristics, have received the local layout inside.  And even in the courtyard of one of them, one will discover a nicely restorated Orthodox church.


All the narrow streets of the village belong to the women, selling handcrafts of all kinds. Sit in one of the small  terrace restaurants and enjoy some local gozleme ( turkish pancake). Another attraction of Sirince is its home grown fruit and grape wines. Enjoy some taste testing in the small cafés or in the beautifully restored former municipal school.

Ayasouluk Castle

The well preserved Byzantine castle which stands on the hill of Ayasuluk  has withstood 1500 years.
As the castle was located at a significant point it was rebuilt and expanded in the Seljukian and Ottoman eras.
The main entrance gate of the castle was constructed from the stones of Roman buildings in the 6th century AD.
The castle has 15 towers and is surrounded by rubble stoned city walls reaching to1.5 km.

A church, -built into a former Byzantine church, a small mosque and several cisterns are within the borders of the citadel of Ayasuluk. Also, it was proved from the remains of sub-mycenean graves belonging to 14th century BC, that the hill was used as a necropolis.

Today the castle stands proud over the ever increasing town of Selcuk.

Saint John Basilica

It is believed that the evangelist St. John had spent his last years in the region around Ephesus and was buried in the southern slope of Ayosolug Hill. Three hundred years after his death, a small chapel was constructed over the grave in the 4th century. The church was changed into a marvelous basilica during the region of Emperor Justinian (527 -565 AD).

Isa Bey Mosque is one of the most delicate examples of Seljukian architecture, situated below the basilica of Saint John. The mosque was built by the master Syrian architecture Ali son of Mushimish 
al -Damishki, between the years of 1374 and 1375.  

The mosque was styled asymmetrically unlike the traditional style, The location of the windows , doors and domes were not matched, purposely. In the entrance of the mosque, an inscription from the god decorates the doorway. The columns inside the house of prayer are from earlier ruins in Ephesus, making an interesting contrast to the mosque . The domes are ornamented by turquoise and blue faience, revealing the characteristic of Ottoman style. Crown-like doors from Seljukian architectural style later combine with the specific decoration elements of architectural style. The mosque was repaired in 1934.    

The mystical atmosphere of "Isa Bey Mosque" must be experienced in the excursion around this region.