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Turkey Classical Antiquity Built: c. 10th century BC UNESCO

Ephesus

Ephesus is one of the largest and most extensively excavated ancient cities in the world, located near the modern town of Selçuk in İzmir Province, Turkey, on the western coast of Anatolia. Founded by Ionian Greeks in the 10th century BC on the site of an earlier Hittite settlement, it grew to become one of the most important cities of the Roman Empire, with a population estimated at 200,000–500,000 at its peak in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. The city was home to the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, as well as a magnificent Library of Celsus, a vast theatre capable of seating 25,000 people, and an elaborate system of marble-paved streets, public baths, and private mansions. Ephesus was also a major centre of early Christianity: the Apostle Paul lived and preached here for three years, and according to tradition, the Virgin Mary spent her final years at a house on the nearby hill of Bülbüldağı.

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Ephesus

Turkey

Longitude: 27.3416

Latitude: 37.9395

Historical Significance

Ephesus represents an unparalleled window into Roman urban life at its height, preserving an almost complete ancient city plan that has yielded some of the finest examples of Roman architecture, sculpture, and mosaic work in existence. Its history as a crossroads of Greek, Roman, and early Christian civilisation makes it one of the most layered and culturally significant archaeological sites in the world. Inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2015, Ephesus receives over 1.5 million visitors annually and remains an active excavation site where new discoveries are made every year.

Facts

Fact 1

The Temple of Artemis — Larger Than the Parthenon

The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, completed around 550 BC and rebuilt after an arson attack in 356 BC, measured approximately 115 by 55 metres and featured 127 columns each 18 metres tall — making it more than four times the size of the Parthenon in Athens.

Fact 2

Herostratus's Infamous Arson

On the night of 21 July 356 BC — the same night Alexander the Great was born — a man named Herostratus burned the Temple of Artemis to the ground purely to achieve immortal fame; the Ephesians condemned his name to be forgotten, but the historian Theopompus recorded it anyway.

Fact 3

The Library of Celsus

The Library of Celsus, built in AD 117–120 as a tomb and monument for the Roman Senator Gaius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus, held an estimated 12,000 scrolls and was the third-largest library in the ancient world after Alexandria and Pergamon.

Fact 4

The Terrace Houses

The "Terrace Houses" (Hanghaus 2) on the slope above the main street preserve extraordinary Roman domestic interiors with intact floor mosaics, frescoed walls, and underfloor heating systems, offering an intimate portrait of aristocratic Roman domestic life available almost nowhere else.

Fact 5

Silted Out of Existence

Ephesus was originally a major seaport, but the Cayster River progressively silted up the harbour over centuries; despite repeated dredging efforts, the sea had retreated so far by the Byzantine period that the city was effectively landlocked and eventually abandoned.

Fact 6

Saint Paul's Letter and Its Riot

According to the Acts of the Apostles, Paul's Christian preaching in Ephesus so threatened the trade in silver shrines of Artemis that a silversmith named Demetrius incited a riot of thousands who filled the theatre chanting "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!" for two hours — one of the most vivid scenes of religious-economic conflict in the New Testament.

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